X-ray analytics Viewpoint careers advice blog

X-ray analytics Applying cutting-edge analytics to employee surveys can reveal the social networks at the heart of organisations, says Rob Cross, Professor of Management at the University of Virginia. His research looks at how relationships and informal networks can boost competitive advantage. What are social networks and why are they important? Almost everything of substance that is created by organisations or groups is collaborative. People rarely solve a problem or deliver a product on their own. Social networks are those patterns of collaboration and interaction, and you can analyse them to see how collaboration is happening inside a group, which gives leaders insight into what exactly is happening inside their organisations. Network analysis can reveal who is turning to whom for help or to approve decisions, who trusts whom or who is energising or demotivating their colleagues. It creates a very rich web of data. It’s especially useful before and directly after mergers, change programmes, or the introduction of new products or processes and new leaders. How far do social networks reach? A network is all of the interactions that we rely on to get things done, which don’t always follow the prescribed ways of doing them. The key question is over how ideas are coming into the group. So, for the network within a research and development function, you would concentrate on looking for internal collaboration, but still provide prompts to record collaboration, such as with specific thought leaders or scientific institutions. But practical network analysis needs to define some boundaries, because it’s down to the whole world if you take it to its natural extension. How do you collect the data? Usually it is a 15-minute web survey supplied to several thousand staff. Over about two decades, we’ve worked with about 300 companies and conducted the surveys 600â€"700 times in different ways. We can include passive data such as email files or CRM data to see who’s interacting with whom, but a survey gives cleaner and crisper insights, as you don’t know, of the 50 emails that people exchanged, what it was that actually helped get something done. What has been the been the best outcome of your network analysis? When trying to improve innovation, we’ve found a way to map people who know different things and help leaders get complementary people together, which has generated some very neat new products and services. In organisations with big process or cost structures, you can identify people doing the same kind of work and make great efficiency gains by cutting that out. There are a lot of applications in the talent space around locating high performers. When we look at who in an organisation enables others to be successful, we may identify 50 people out of about 500 who are really important to that network. Often, compared with the company’s top 50 in terms of pay, there’s less than 50 per cent of overlap. That helps companies rethink how they’re allocating rewards and whom they want in their development programmes. Is there a difference between communicating and actually helping? We can ask questions that differentiate who you turn to for information and what you get from them, and whether it’s just routine information or something more, such as strategic advice or expertise. Often that helps us see where organisational design is outdated around certain roles or certain leaders. Who is most interested in network analysis? Heads of salesforces and RD, as well as human resources, because lots of the analysis comes back to technical applications. The biggest benefits tend to come from knowledge-intensive work, from engineering and RD to investment banking and professional services â€" anywhere ideas are at the heart and people rely on each other for information and resources. View the full article from issue 7 of our bi-annual publication the Hays Journal, providing global insights into the world of work. You can view the article in the  Hays Journal online, via the Hays Journal iPad app or request a printed copy from  haysjournal@hays.com Engage with fellow HR professionals across the globe and stay up to date with the latest HR news, by joining our LinkedIn group. Join the conversation