A View from the Inside: How Sociologists are Shaping the Future of Corporate Work

• In Event: 41064 - Strategies for Broadening Knowledge and Engaging with Communities through the Use of Sociology

Abstract

Businesses love data, and sociologists are skilled at making sense of it. In this case study, I will demonstrate how the growing field of People Analytics is ripe for sociological practice. More specifically, I’ll showcase our work at Vanguard, a firm of ~20,000 people with a longstanding tradition of leveraging data and supporting employees. I’ll walk through how sociologists helped radically transform Vanguard’s employee survey system to ensure the data we gather is focused, frequent, and actionable.

By centralizing data analysis and introducing well-established methods from sociology, we unburdened 2,000+ leaders from hours of digging through data. Our centralized analysis quickly detects which employees need support and identifies actions that are likely to increase engagement for specific employees. This shift required resilience from our team, as we navigated organizational growth pains. Some of our partners had low data literacy and were loyal to legacy analytical approaches, so I will show how we overcame some of these hurdles and built trust with partners who were resistant to change. Now that we collect data continually, Vanguard can take action to better support their employees all year long. This agility lays the foundation for us to experiment with initiatives to ensure they are successful before they are scaled. In short, this presentation will showcase how good science can drive business decisions.

In sharing my journey, I’ll also show how skills core to sociological training, such as research planning, psychometrics, advanced analytics, and data storytelling, are highly valued in a corporate context. Not only do sociologists bring valuable methodological skills to the table, but we also bring deep knowledge of the social world and an ability to identify the mechanisms stakeholders are eager to understand. Sociological theories serve as useful anchors that help partners make sense of our ever-growing research insights.

Author

• Kayla Danielle Russell Pierce, Vanguard