Eliza Cooke-Yarborough's Profile

This is a great article and felt very relevant as I have recently been helping my younger sister (who is Gen Z) with recruiting for her first job, as she graduates from undergrad this June. I have certainly noticed a difference in the things that she looks for in a future employer, and to the point you mention above, she and her peers speak much more openly about mental health and wellness and see it as something to prioritize. I like the idea that people analytics could be used to help employers cater to the needs of employees at various stages of their career – taking into account personal situations such as new parents, or employees who want the variety of work-related travel. I do wonder if there are concerns to using data in this way, as if an employer tackles this from the wrong angle they may end up perpetuating stereotypes and biases across social groups, ages and genders within their employee base. As ever, this application of people analytics seems like it will require a delicate balance of pushing forward the use cases of the data, while maintaining a cautious approach to data privacy, equity and inclusion, and being transparent with employees about the ways in which their data is being used.
Thanks for sharing – this was an interesting topic to read about!

Really interesting article! I enjoyed thinking about the range of possibilities for making the office an ‘optimal’ place for employees to work from, by addressing everything from hydration and health, to network analysis and promoting connections between team members based on their seating arrangements. This last point reminded me of the first company I worked at after undergrad, where we adopted a “hot-desking” system – every day everyone in the office had to find an available desk and when we got there there were sensors that tracked our presence – I suppose there are many other things they could have tracked as well. It would have been interesting to see if employees really did end up sitting next to a range of other team members over prolonged periods of time or whether people ended up coming in early and sitting in the same place as much as they could!
One concern (which is mentioned in the linked article) is the problem of who owns all of this data. It seems only fair that the company and the employees on whom data is being collected should have access to the data and some control over what it is used for. I can imagine a scenario where some employees might be deterred from working at a company that is not fully transparent on how it is using the office sensor data, or where a scandal breaks out after employee data is sold to third party firms unknowingly!
A lot of interesting potential in all of the ideas of sensors we could have within a smart office, but overall it leaves me feeling a bit uneasy – rather like how some people feel about the presence of wide ranging CCTV on streets in the UK!

This was such an interesting use case of people analytics to consider, and I agree that there is wide-ranging potential for the application of people analytics to healthcare and treatment. One hesitation in my mind (as I considered the hypothetical scenario with the physician who hadn’t performed this procedure for 4 months) was how newer and younger professionals would ever gain the necessary experience without the exposure to ‘new’ procedures or ones that they have less experience with. Of course, as a patient, I would prefer to have the most experienced healthcare professional possible – but at the same time I recognize the need for physicians to “learn on the job” if we are to continue developing the pipeline of future surgeons. [I recently read the book by Henry Marsh – ‘Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery’ which chronicles his career in a series of cases, and discusses this very issue of allowing junior doctors to learn on the job, while balancing optimal outcomes for patients]. Another concern I have is whether this sort of information would lead to treatment disparity across socio economic groups if a situation developed where patients paid extra to get the ‘most experienced’ surgeon, according to the data. Sadly, in a country with a healthcare system that is heavily geared towards wealthier patients, I fear this could quickly become a bigger issue.

Thanks for sharing this blog post – I really enjoyed thinking more about this topic!