Watercooler Conversations: Treasure Trove of Data or a Waste of Time?

For long, managers have treated watercooler conversations as blackholes that suck time. Words like hindered productivity, wasted time and long breaks are thrown around such a gathering. 

Image from miro.medium.com 

But is there a reason to encourage employees to take such breaks?

Relational Analytics might just be that reason.

But first, a little background about people (or HR) analytics. 

Simply put, HR Analytics is the data-driven way to make HR decisions. HR data is collected and analyzed to uncover patterns and boost the performance of the workforce.
According to an article in HBR by Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor, on the basis of the type of HR metric used, HR Analytics can be divided into two: Attribute Analytics and Relational Analytics. 

1. Attribute Analytics focusses on two types of metrics: Traits like ethnicity, gender, and work history and State like age, education level, company tenure, the value of received bonus. These facts about an individual may or may not change.

2. Relational Analytics uses data related to employee's relationships and communications. 

According to the article by Leonardi and Contractor, "there are six structural signatures that should form the bedrock of any relational analytics strategy". 

So what does this have to do with watercooler gossip?

Studies have shown that employees who do not constrain themselves to co-workers from their own department are better at coming up with ideas that are generally regarded as good and novel. (Ideation Signature)

On similar lines, organizations where departments are siloed to a greater degree, inter-departmental communication and ideation are seriously hindered.  (Silo Signature)

So how do these signatures applied to organizations? 

Employee interaction at watercoolers and other social gathering spots can reveal patterns to strategically redesign the workforce.

For example, analysing email communication patterns between employees and distributors, organizations can identify which employee has the best relationship with the distributor. If the relationship is deeply dependent on that particular employee, it may leave the organization vulnerable. (Vulnerability Signature)

Employees who have the strongest connections to even a few people can be great influencers. The individual's influence gets stronger if the few connections have stronger connections with diverse people. (Influence Signature). This shows a positive correlation with the Ideation Signature.

Conversely, for teams, the Efficiency Signature and the Innovation Signature have a negative correlation. Teams with high Efficiency Signature may not climb the innovation ladder a lot.

Email conversations, file transfers, chats on work platforms, physical interactions are all excellent stores of relationship data. 

So, let the employees flock around the watercooler and your CCTV do the decision-making for you. Just do it with the consent of your employees. 😃