Heard on the [HCM] Hill: Moovila

When it comes to the evolution of HR and analytics, no one else holds a candle to big-thinker Mike Psenka, the founder and CEO of Moovila. Prior to Moovila, Mike founded eThority, the award-winning business intelligence and analytics company that he sold to Equifax in 2011 and stayed on to run the business in the larger Equifax organization. The eThority platform won numerous awards, analyst accolades and was recognized as the industry-leading solution.

A resident of South Carolina, Mike graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He holds multiple technology patents related to the products and services produced by his companies. We were excited to catch up with him to learn more about his latest venture: Moovila, a platform that engages organizations around common visions and strategies by ensuring accountability, transparency and execution.

Mike, you’ve dedicated much of your career to how companies can leverage data to make better business decisions. Do you think HR has fully realized the potential of analytics in their day-to-day operations yet?

HR has made a lot of progress in analytics, but is still just scratching the surface in terms of finding and measuring the right types of metrics, then turning that data into actionable knowledge that can help organizations make smarter decisions. We’ve seen the more progressive companies measuring things like capabilities and skills – not just standard performance metrics – which is an improved direction for identifying and using metrics to improve productivity within organizations. This will help organization find the right people, place them in the right roles, and then match them with the right teams and projects. Also, these analytics will help us better understand employees over time, which could help predict performance and highlight patterns that may indicate an employee is becoming disengaged, about to leave, etc.

At its website, Moovila refers to email as “the black hole of communication.” Yet, many of us are relying on it for both communications and as a rudimentary project management tool. Why is that a bad idea?

Does email serve a purpose? Yes, and it’s not going away any time soon. But, that purpose needs to be defined. For one-off, simple digital communications, email is a great tool. However, given that we receive an average of 25,000 emails per year, it is not the most efficient or productive place to be communicating and managing important projects. When you ask someone to do something via email, they can easily miss or disregard an email. There is no contractual obligation to do what is being requested. And this is why we refer to email as “the black hole of communication.” No department feels this pain like HR, which is interacting with every department across the organization.

Moovila brings the handshake back to business by requiring all tasks to be accepted or rejected, so all parties are in agreement and informed. There is no longer the excuse, “I didn’t see your email” and users don’t have to dig through cluttered inboxes for information or to see where a project stands. This agreement ensures accountability, which is necessary for effectively executing team projects.

How does using a platform like Moovila enable better strategy execution across an enterprise? Is this something only large companies should attempt or can smaller companies benefit from it as well?

First, consider that organizational strategy should not just be an annual occurrence. It happens daily, across every department and every employee. Moovila enables you to communicate strategy in an actionable format that allows employees to interact from the top down and bottom up by assigning their work to the organizational goals and objectives. This keeps employees engaged throughout the year and empowers them to demonstrate to leadership what they’re contributing. In turn, leadership can see if the work being executed is in line with the overall strategy, and if initiatives do not match up with the outlined goals, it’s a sign the strategy may need to be re-evaluated.

This is absolutely something both large and small companies should be doing. Strategy is arguably the most important function in any organization. Your strategy sets you apart from competitors and helps you run your business, yet 2 out of 3 employees don’t understand their organization’s strategy or how their job relates to it. No matter the size of your business, you want your employees to understand what they’re working on and why it matters, and you want to be sure the business is operating in line with the plans you set out to be successful. Otherwise, why are you doing what you’re doing?

If you’d like to learn more about Moovila, we hope you’ll visit their website at www.moovila.com. Team Moovila will be at the 20th Annual HR Tech Conference, being held in Las Vegas from October 10-13. You can find them in booth 3041 at the show!