What if you could speak a language understood by everyone in the world?
What, you say. There is no such language.
Ashley Vella, an Amazon HR business partner, disagrees with you. Math, she explains in the DisruptHR video from Vancouver, Canada, is the same no matter where in the world you are. And that’s reason enough for HR people to learn to speak it.
“There’s opportunity for all of us to differentiate ourselves as HR partners to the business by focusing on a skill that isn’t traditionally affiliated within our profession,” Vella says. That would be math; math applied in the analysis of data. “Providing data when presenting an idea will always be viewed as more strategic than providing an idea that doesn’t have data to back it up.”
But I’m not good at math, you say. Stop doing that, is Vella’s response who prescribes a four-step program to transform yourself into a mathlete:
- Know your audience.
- Leverage existing tools
- Leverage subject matter experts
- Delight your audience
No, those steps are not self-explanatory. You’ll need to spend 5 minutes learning what they mean and how to work them. If you take the time, you’ll discover that working with data that is meaningful to your business unit partner is not nearly as hard as you might think.
In partnership with DisruptHR, TLNT presents some of the best Disrupt presentations from events across North America and now the world. Disrupt talks are modeled on the TEDx concept: Short, to the point talks on all things HR — talent, culture and technology.