Data Owner Benefit-Driven Design of People Analytics

Abstract: With increasingly digitalized workplaces, the potential for sophisticated analyses of employee data rises. This increases the relevance of people analytics (PA), which are tools for the behavioral analysis of employees. Despite this potential, the successful usage of PA is hindered by employee concerns. Especially in Europe, where the GDPR or equivalent laws apply, employee consent is required before data can be processed in PA. Therefore, PA can only provide relevant insights if employees are willing to share their data. One potential way of achieving this is the use of appeal strategies. In the design of PA, the core strategy that can be used is the inclusion of data owner benefits, such as automated feedback, that are given to employees in exchange for sharing their own data. In this paper, we examine benefits as an appeal strategy and develop four design principles for the inclusion of benefits in PA. Then, we describe an exemplary set of analyses and benefits, demonstrating how our principles may be put into practice. Based on this exemplary implementation, we describe and discuss the results of a user study ($n = 46$) among employees in the EU and UK. Our study investigates the factors that foster or hinder employees' consent to sharing their data with PA. Then, we introduce our data owner benefits and analyze whether they can positively influence this consent decision. Our introduced data owner benefits were, contrary to our expectations, not suited to motivate our participants to consent to sharing their data. We therefore analyze how participants judge the benefits. Participants generally appreciate having them, confirming the value of including data owner benefits when designing PA. Some of our introduced benefits negatively influenced participants' sharing decision, though, meaning that careful consideration of potential risks is required when conceptualizing them.