Using Data for Decisions and Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Workforce planning sits at the heart of this video, which addresses AC 3.1 of FREE02 – People Professional Technologies. The video examines how quantitative people data — covering headcount, age profiles, skills, tenure, turnover rates, absence, engagement, performance, DEI and pay metrics — feeds into current state analysis and forecasting. It walks through how dashboards and KPIs function as practical tools for surfacing these figures, and how gap analysis connects a present-day workforce picture to projected future needs, including demographic shifts and emerging skill shortages.

A substantial portion of the video is devoted to triangulation: the practice of combining quantitative data with qualitative sources such as exit interviews, focus groups, one-to-one conversations, survey comments and workplace observations. The video makes clear that numerical data can identify what is happening across a workforce, while qualitative insight addresses why those patterns exist — illustrating this with reference to a scenario in which a turnover spike visible on a dashboard requires contextual investigation to interpret meaningfully.

The distinction between correlation and causation receives dedicated attention, with the video using a concrete example involving leadership programme participation and promotion rates to demonstrate how an apparent relationship between two variables can be misleading when a third factor goes unexamined. The video sets out a set of diagnostic questions — about timing, plausible mechanisms and confounding variables — that practitioners can apply when evaluating whether an observed correlation supports a decision. The overall framework positions evidence-based recommendations, built from both data types, as the standard for credible people professional practice.