Cindy Foxworth – How Executives Use HR Analytics to Make Business Decisions

Connect with Cindy:

• 

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• ADT Solar
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 20
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 18

• “If you're not showing the graphs that tell the story—if you're just spewing numbers or facts, you're making no change. [HR analytics] has to tell a story that leads to actionable items that impact the company in a positive way.”
• “What I challenge myself with daily . . . is making sure [I] don't have blinders on and that [I’m] not repeating the same cycle over and over. [I’m] continually looking for other data, other information.”

Announcer: 0:02
Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we have with us our friend, podcast host and Salary.com employee, Dwight Brown! How you doing, Dwight?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:58

Good, David, how you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 0:59

I'm okay. Today we have with us a phenomenal guest. She's a friend, a client, and she's a brilliant CHRO. Our friend Cindy Foxworth, the CHRO of Sunpro Solar, now an ADT company. Hey, Cindy, how are you?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 1:16

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for the introduction.

 

David Turetsky: 1:19

Cindy, why don't you give us a little bit about your background and how you got to today?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 1:23

Well, I've been in human resources for some years. Started in manufacturing and I've worked pretty much in every role within within the department. I've been in manufacturing, in healthcare, in banking, in higher education. For the large share of my professional career about 18 years in higher education. And now I'm working in solar, and I've been in this industry for about three and a half years. SPHR certified SHRM-CP certified and absolutely love everything about human resources and the opportunities that are afforded to companies to improve their processes, and employees to improve their opportunities, as well as just their their life and what they can do for their families through a great work environment.

 

David Turetsky: 2:16

That's great.

 

Dwight Brown: 2:17

Great.

 

David Turetsky: 2:18

So Cindy, one thing we ask every single guest of the HR Data Labs podcast is one fun thing that no one knows about you.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 2:27

I love adventure. And I love adventure. I scuba dive and absolutely love doing it. Spear fish just dive for the beauty of what I say underneath the water and have been around sharks a time or two underwater. Not to my plan. But it did happen.

 

David Turetsky: 2:52

Right. Did you have you ever had to punch the shark in the nose to get it away?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 2:57

No, I did not get that close. I got out of the water quickly when I realized there was one hovering above me.

 

David Turetsky: 3:05

Yeah, that's scary. I think it's actually shark week now, isn't it? It may be always Shark Week, but it feels like it's Shark Week.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 3:11

I had been watching it and I've learned a lot. Know where I don't want to be.

 

David Turetsky: 3:17

Well, next time I see Jaws I'll think of you.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 3:19

Please don't!

 

Dwight Brown: 3:19

Please don't associate me with that!

 

David Turetsky: 3:28

No. Okay. All right. Okay.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:31

Well, if you love adventure, we'll get you out paragliding with me. Right, David?

 

David Turetsky: 3:35

No, no, no, please don't Cindy. I'm still freaking out about the last time Dwight went on his paragliding adventure. And he will tell you that there are probably six or seven emails that he has for me asking him to please do something safer. Maybe like go bowling.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:53

David says to me, will you please take up knitting?

 

David Turetsky: 3:58

No, no, no, no, it's got needles. So today, we're going to talk about some fascinating stuff with you. We're going to be exploring how HR analytics gets used at the executive table to make business decisions. And that's something that we love to discuss especially with CHROs like Cindy. So Cindy, our first question is you've been in the HR world for a long time but has it been your experience at analytics have been a part of the executive decision making process within your organizations?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 4:37

Not for the most part. As the years have increased, it's now part of the way companies look at every aspect of the business. But that is to me that's relatively new within the past eight years or so. Companies looked at human resources more as a transactional, administrative department and didn't really see the full effect of what HR professionals can bring to the table as far as increasing ROI increasing EBITA by analyzing not just the business side, but the employee side as it relates to the strategic goals and taking it down to a granular level. So you can implement effective changes.

 

David Turetsky: 5:26

Yeah, I mean, we we've talked to CFOs in the past and CIOs about how they're able to leverage analytics very easily, either in the finance group or logistics, or marketing and sales. And they've been doing that successfully for years. And it's just very strange. HR is now finally getting there. And I guess the question is, how did it get introduced in your world in the HR world?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 5:51

Well, kind of twofold. The CEO of our company is an accountant by education. And so he likes to look at numbers. Myself as HR professional try to stay on the cutting edge of what's taking place. And understanding that going in and presenting at an executive table. If you're not giving analytics, if you're not giving data, if you're not showing the graphs that tell the story. If you're just spewing numbers, or facts, you're making no change. So it has to tell a story. And a story has to lead to actionable items that impact the company in a positive way. And so, over the past three years, that has been my my goal, and where have I focused all of my attention. No well, I won't say all of my attention a large amount of my attention. Especially when you're in a company that's growing at the pace in which we're growing, you have to look at what you're doing, because you're spending a lot of money. And if you're doing it incorrectly, you're wasting a lot of money. And so I've gone so far as to hire someone full time to do nothing but HR analytics on a daily, weekly, quarterly monthly basis. And we take that that information, and we look at it and see if we're to the pro or to the con. And then like I said previously, we bring it down to a granular level. Because specifically in our organization, we've grown so fast, that you can automatically look at this data. And it tells you a beautiful picture, this market is being successful, this market isn't being successful, you take your attrition rate, your quick quits, and you link that to the production within that area. Do you link that to your employee relations issues within that area, you look at link it to your overtime within that area. And it tells you a beautiful story that gives you the map for improving. And it doesn't all go to a poor manager or poor leader, it can go to what's going on in that market. It can it can go to a leader that is excellent but hasn't been provided all the tools that we need to provide. And that tells us hey, we're not we're not doing our due diligence with that individual we need to to work a little harder and bring them up to speed and make them aware of what's going on. Because what I found is people look at the individual cases, they look at the individual issues. They don't say oh my gosh, I had no idea. It was one here and one there. I didn't realize that it equated to 50 in a month. That that's that's actionable.

 

David Turetsky: 8:35

Right? Well, it's the difference between looking at one pixel on a screen versus looking at the entire picture, right? So if you zoom in too much, you don't get the full picture and are able to see the patterns that exist. And the kind of you talked about hiring one person that kind of did the analytics for the that worked on the analytics. But does it really change your view about who you hire and how you upskill the people that you already have in your organization? though?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 9:01

It absolutely does. It absolutely does. Because, you know, we've brought it into cost. Cost per hire based on training, recruiting, and it's a lot of money. So if we don't take that information and bring it to a level that tells the story of what we need to do to make those hires more successful, out of the gate, not you know, three months, six months down the road, but immediately because there's such a cost involved with that. And when you're working in commission, if people aren't having that those funds come in, they're not going to stay with you. So you have to make them successful out of the gate. So you absolutely look at this data and have to evaluate it consistently to make sure that that you're addressing what issues there are out there and you're addressing them as a whole by market and by individual too.

 

Announcer: 10:00

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David Turetsky: 10:11

So let's touch on question two, which is that there are benefits that you get from looking at these analytics. And there are benefits as you, as you mentioned, that increase ROI on hires, what are the other strategic and functional benefits that you get across the organization that you can see beyond HR?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 10:29

One, it has raised the bar with the department leaders within the organization to understand what HR is and what we bring to the table and to make us more of a business partner. So they value what we have to say. They value and want to know, what are you doing? What do you see? And what can I do better as a leader over this business unit? So it's definitely raised the level of respect and understanding of what human resources is. But it also it changes a lot of transactional functions that happen across the organization, when you have a lot of turnover or a lot of Employee Relations events, and then you can recapture that time to be aggressive toward the future. And taking taking that time and saying, Okay, where do we want to be in five years looking at our strategic plan, and spend our time in a positive way versus a reactive negative way.

 

David Turetsky: 11:28

Do you use those managers as well ask better questions? Are they able to frame some of their issues differently? Not just in from the HR context, but are they able to actually start internalizing how your analytics help them make better decisions around the things they're doing beyond just the HR stuff?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 11:47

Absolutely, absolutely. And they don't, they won't make the decisions without that data. They've they've come to build that into their total decision making process. If that's not there, they can't make the decision. If they don't have that information, they cannot make that decision.

 

Dwight Brown: 12:05

Well, it's got to be it's got to be fun, I would imagine that you've had your share of aha moments that these that these managers and leaders have, which, you know, nothing better than an aha moment to truly realize the value of what you're providing, and kind of reinforce the fact that you're going down the right road.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 12:25

Absolutely. And you know, and I'm a proponent of stop and think, don't just act and react. And I've been able to help some understanding with that within our organization, by providing these analytics.

 

David Turetsky: 12:42

I imagined stop and think seems like a very strange thing to say, when we're talking about executives, right. And I'm not just trying to be facetious, but but way too often, we use our knee jerk reaction. And we don't take that opportunity to sit back a second and say, let me look at the picture a little differently now, now that I have a little bit more information and be able to then maybe come up with a different conclusion, based on this new data, this new input?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 13:11

Absolutely. And the decisions and conclusions are not subjective. And as much as people say, you know, I don't take personal feelings, or, or whatever into account, it's human nature to a degree, this takes that out of it. You you think this because you saw this one time, but what about the other 99 times, then that was not occurring. And so that really is not an issue. It's an issue, in your belief, because of your experience with that one situation, individual transaction, but it really is not an issue. So let's focus on what the issues are, versus spending our time focusing on something that makes no difference. It's not going to affect the business or the success of the business in any way, shape, or form.

 

David Turetsky: 14:03

I would imagine now that these managers have have had access to the data, they've had access to the insights, they're making better decisions, they're thinking more holistically, that that will lead them to maybe not just think about you differently, as you said, you now have a seat at the table. But they may bring you in sooner and be able to think through the business problem from beginning. Have you seen the change in attitude that leads you to, again, not just have a seat at the table, but be brought in sooner rather than later, when it comes to business problems?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 14:40

Absolutely. A lot of times in the past, it was this is what we decided and now we need you to implement and come back to us with your recommendation and then implement. Now it's, let's talk through this together as a team. Let's look at it from every perspective. Let's use our data, analysts as a, as a leadership group come up with the best solution. Because not specifically in the environment I'm in now, but just in, you know, the many years of HR, a lot of times I would receive the directive. And the minute I saw it, I was like, that that's missing pieces, or that's not the best answer. There's pieces and parts of that that are good. But that's not the best answer, then coming back and changing minds and changing the directive, after everybody's on go, is a much harder thing to do. Sure, then to get involved in it in the beginning, and be part of the conversation. And that's where HR has, has grown, and is making a positive impact on organizations.

 

David Turetsky: 15:50

Yeah, I mean, it's all about instead of being reactive, being proactive, being part of proactivity and, and being able to lead rather than having to implement,

 

Cindy Foxworth: 16:00

And I will say, part of my motivation. And you know, this knowing me is I, I absolutely truly care about every employee. And I feel like if we recruited and we hired you, we saw something in you. So if we're able to see your strengths, and your weaknesses through analysis, then we can put a plan together to help you work through those weaknesses, because that's on us as well. It's a partnership, we're here to help you grow. And so analytics have allowed us to see those holes where we can improve our leaders and our employees. And that also gives them career pathing and reduces turnover. And people going into the roles have a much better knowledge base of our systems as a whole versus hiring externally.

 

David Turetsky: 16:58

So Cindy, one of the things I'd love to ask you based on your experiences is, which analytics do you find? And we'll break this into two questions. Which analytics do you find managers embrace? And then which analytics do you find managers just don't find any value in whatsoever? And let's start with the embracing first.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 17:16

Okay, managers embrace. And I'm gonna speak to this from my you know, a company growing very fast. They the time to fill the cost per hire, the quick quits and the attrition are their, their go tos. And because they want to know how quickly are you going to get John Doe in a seat and producing, so they're looking at the time to hire, and we're on short rains with that we move very fast. But as I continually tell them, it's not just, you know, throwing spaghetti on the wall, it's a quality hire in that seat. So we need to look at your attrition from several perspectives, we need to be sure we're framing the job right with the candidate, we're screening correctly with the candidate, we're assessing using the right tools for assessment with a candidate. And then once they get here, we're orienting them, right, we're training them correctly. And that's where your quick quits comes in is a huge, and we do 30 60 90 days, as well as exit interviews for everybody that that leaves. And so what I do for the attrition, I not only pull the attrition rates, I pull the quick quits with it, I pull the what tools we used in the recruiting process with those candidates, and I pull the employee relations, if there were complaints on a manager, if there were, I just don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing. And then lastly, I'm pulling the exit interview, because employees are usually very honest, when they're not working for us anymore. And I pull all that data to do a true attrition report. And it tells the story, we're immediately like, we really need to work on this or that was just not a good good hire for that job. And these are the reasons why. So we need to make our TA team aware of that work with our hiring managers on that. And, and so that is the go to, but it's just not your X percent of turnover because you also you know, we look at it by market and what's going on in that market. And, and so we bring it down to those levels. So as I continue to stay, it's got to actually be usable information and tell a story. So to me if you just say hey, you've got 25% attrition, that tells me nothing. So, so we bring it down with all that additional information.

 

Dwight Brown: 19:59

It provides continuous learning about what's going on in the organization that you can then use.

 

David Turetsky: 20:04

Right?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 20:05

Absolutely. And you can't just assume what is happening today is the same three months from now. With COVID and with the great resignation, and everything that's going on, nothing is stagnant anymore. It is ever changing. And if you're not ever evaluating you're, you're behind the eight ball before you start.

 

David Turetsky: 20:26

Absolutely.

 

Dwight Brown: 20:28

Well, that's I've seen that over and over with organizations where, you know, the good part about analytics and numbers is that it provides you insights into your organization. But if you're not continuously changing what you're looking at, to try to follow the ball that can get you mired down into the mud even further, you know, so it's effective use of analytics.

 

David Turetsky: 20:51

So now let's look at the ones that managers or the analytics metrics that managers do not embrace, or kind of push back on.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 21:01

They do not really care about like cost per hire. They just want the good hire. Right? They don't care about that. But it is a cost to the company. So we do have to look at it and and determine, is there any way we can lower that cost and still get the same level candidate. So that that is something they're not interested in. For the most part, you know, we do a lot of analytics around Employee Relations tickets, we have a ticketing system, and we do a lot of analytics around that. They don't really want to get into that information. They instead they want to know what are we going to do to improve that information? So they don't they don't want to get into the the nuts and bolts of it. Just you tell me you know what it is your your, your team's getting the calls, y'all know what's going on. Just tell me what you're gonna do to fix it.

 

David Turetsky: 21:53

What about beyond recruiting? Are there other metrics that are either embraced or that cause a visceral reaction beyond just the recruiting metrics? I'll give you an example. Like, overtime metrics are usually really embraced, sometimes embraced, especially in organizations that have a lot of overtime expectation from their employees. And,

 

Cindy Foxworth: 22:14

Yeah, absolutely. And we do a lot of analytics. And thank you for bringing that up. We do a lot of analytics, around hours worked overtime versus jobs on the books to make sure if we are having overtime that it's truly work time, it's not moving slower than we need to, or not having the equipment or the tools or the supplies to get the job done. But you're on the clock. So we analyze that weekly, I'm actually part of a team of six that we look at that every single week. And we drill down and we're like, why are we having so much overtime in this market, what's going on. And we immediately bring in the leaders from that department, and evaluate it as we and part of it is the overtime costs. But it's also you know, the production analytics, and it's not just we have home a and home b. Home b may be three times the size of home a or it may be a two story, those things take more time. So and we have to take into account drive time, we have a lot of drive time. And we have to take that into account. So what we do is we see if we're having a lot of drive time in a certain area, maybe it's time to open a new warehouse, because our sales team has expanded their drive time. So now we've got enough jobs on the books and enough sales to justify a new warehouse so we can decrease our drive time and make that productive time.

 

David Turetsky: 23:47

I like to call that reducing organizational friction. Where you're looking at the metrics to solve for what's causing production delays, and whatever can be reduced from a friction perspective, enables that to happen more quickly.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 24:01

And I'll also look at benefit analytics because I always want to be sure each year we're looking at our benefit offerings and making sure we're, we're competitive in the market and we're taking care of the needs of the employees. And so I'm always looking at who's enrolled in what by demographic, by region by job title, whatever it may be to see if we're, you know, what I think we may need may not be what we need. I'm not the deciding factor, the employees and the executive team are the deciding factor based on cost and need. And so, continually we look at that and try to stay really aggressive and proactive on our benefit offerings.

 

David Turetsky: 24:46

And what about the ones that, again beyond TA the ones that are not embraced?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 24:52

The executive team that I'm a part of is data driven. So I'm really lucky that way. And so there's nothing that I present or that we've looked at that they're like, I don't care. So it's nothing that's not embrace. There's just things that they are their go tos. And I think a lot of it is because we combine a lot of the data into the end story. And not just saying, here's your this, here's your that it's what does that look like? And so those are their go tos. But they like all that.

 

David Turetsky: 25:23

That's more mature Cindy, because I deal with a lot of people who will throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall to kind of use the term you were talking about before to see to say, whatever sticks. And so they'll create dashboards that have tons of metrics in it, and becomes just noise because they can't see the story. And so creating those stories and being able to weave the appropriate statistics and metrics into it make a lot more sense and hopefully make it more easily consumable.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 25:50

I think so. I think it does, and I think it makes a positive impact on the business much quicker.

 

David Turetsky: 26:05

So Cindy, we've talked about how analytics can be part of the decision making process, especially when HR Analytics can help the organization succeed. We talked about what differences it can make, and how HR actually gets not only the seat at the table, but respected. And we've also talked about what kind of analytics are embraced and which ones are pushed away. Any other things that you wanted to bring up before we close?

 

Cindy Foxworth: 26:29

Oh, I would say what I challenge myself with daily and I think any aggressive CHRO HR leader should is making sure you don't have blinders on and that you're not repeating the same cycle over and over continually to look for other data other information. And don't assume you know it, talk to the people out there in the field, you know, what are you doing on a regular basis? If you were leading this, what would you be looking at, because a lot of times they know what's happening and where the holes are. And nobody else does know because there's no way to report it. And then all of a sudden, you're like, that's an aha moment. And they're living it daily and saying, I don't understand this. I don't know why we're doing this this way. And so don't stay in office, go, go interact with the people doing the job, you're going to learn so much. And anything you learn can then be reformatted into some type analytical presentation, that gives you mobility to improve.

 

David Turetsky: 27:42

Well said. That's excellent. Thank you very much, Cindy. It was wonderful speaking to you.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 27:47

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

 

David Turetsky: 27:50

Our pleasure! Dwight, thank you.

 

Dwight Brown: 27:52

Thank you and thank you, Cindy, for being with us. This has been great.

 

Cindy Foxworth: 27:56

I enjoyed it. Thank you.

 

David Turetsky: 27:58

We did too, we're probably gonna ask you back. And thank you all for listening and stay safe.

 

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