When we hear about new technology, we are always worried about it and often search for companies which have adapted to those technologies successfully. There are some companies who constantly build risk taking and trial and error methods, around technology, Nokia is one of them.
Nokia is a public, multinational infrastructure and networking company with a focus on using its technology to connect the world. Nokia was founded in 1865 and is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. The company has shifted from various industries since its founding, moving from rubber and cables to technology development and consumer electronics. In 2007, the company shifted from consumer electronics to the networking industry and building infrastructure for the networking needs of communications service providers, industries, and the public sector. Nokia has established a dominant presence all around the world with nearly 95,000 employees worldwide. So, can you imagine, how scattered their product-services-customer data would be? And how tedious it would be to handle it?
Being in the networking industry, Nokia is naturally a data-driven company. However, introducing data analytics into the human resources (HR) department was a new challenge. Under the leadership of David Shontz, Global Head of HR Workforce Analytics and Organization Management, HR at Nokia, the company has undergone an extended, four-phase journey to consolidate and visualize its data. Because of the strong foundation the HR department has built over the past few years, Microsoft Power BI has played a key role in helping Nokia to effectively utilize its data during the era of COVID-19.
Discovering the possibilities with data
It happened in 2016, when Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent. The acquisition left HR with data for approximately 50,000 new employees and no unified way to consolidate and integrate it all. And since many employees were aware of Microsoft tools, it was easier for them to adapt to Power BI Service.
Data-driven decision making
After the mid 2018, with the help of expertise in Power Bi, they developed and launched dynamic dashboards for HR metrics, with the help of excel. With the flexibility and customization in Bi, they replaced monthly scorecards and long workforce PowerPoint decks with dynamic and interactive Power BI dashboard. In 2019, data visualization was successfully used by the leaders. Power BI is now not only being used for viewing workforce analytics such as headcount, attrition rates, gender, and tenure, but is also being used for Center of Excellence (CoE) analytics like compensation, leadership, and talent acquisition.
Using Power Bi during Covid!!
The Workforce Analytics Team partnered with Nokia’s Health and Safety team, Travel team, Personal Services team, and the Employee Survey team, to get a comprehensive set of data needed to understand the COVID-19 impact on their employees. It helped them understand employee needs in the crisis and changing situations. They created Covid 19 dashboards in just 3 weeks and work was not disturbed, rather increased as all worked safely from their homes. Now, Nokia also uses Bi for understanding daily updates on how situations can or are affecting their employees based on locations, active cases, and transmission rates.
I am sure this motivates you during this tough time and creates hope on how technology can help connecting your employees.
Blog by
Aishwarya Parchure
HR Head
Addend Analytics LLP