Cartier HR data director: People analytics is a business necessity

In September 2021, Julien Legret joined French luxury goods Maison Cartier as global people analytics and HR digital director.

In an exclusive editorial interview at UNLEASH World 2023 in Paris last week, Mr Legret shares that he was appointed to oversee a new digital HR department that moved beyond simple data collection and reporting, and towards “proper” people analytics and data-driven decision-making.

Although the HR teams in the 30+ countries where Cartier operates had access to a global data solution, the adoption was very low – the departments didn’t understand the why behind the tool.

Therefore, there was a real need to invest in new technology – after a six-month RFP process, Cartier settled on Visier because of the ease of use, and its scalability.

The roll out began in February 2022 – read on to find out Cartier and Mr Legret’s reflections on Visier and its wider people analytics journey over the past 18 months, as well as what the future looks like.

Achieving leadership and HR buy-in for analytics

UNLEASH was keen to find out how Mr Legret, as a new team member at Cartier, managed to get leadership and HR‘s buy-in for the new tool, but also the new approach data and analytics.

He shares that he started as first priority to align with the CHRO on the ambitions for the department. The intention was to clarify leadership’s willingness to move from traditional reporting towards proper people analytics.

Ultimately, this wasn’t just HR’s decision – this was a business choice, and it complemented wider trends within the business; over the past few years, Cartier has generally been figuring out how to be more data-informed and data-driven as a company.

“We reached a strong maturity level” around commercial, manufacturing and supply chain data, for example, but the capabilities when it came to people data were not there. There was a need to make sure people data didn’t get left behind.

Plus, there was a growing business case for using HR data to “really improve productivity, performance”.

Mr Legret declares: “People are your biggest asset. People data is a fundamental piece to managing your people in the right way.”

Mr Legret wasn’t interested in doing people analytics solely for HR – he wanted to take it to the business. He made sure HR was clear on their ownership of the data that the wider business would have access to with the right anonymization and data protection measures.

He shares: “You’ve got to work with HR to say ‘I am going to do it, so you need to be with me’.”

The change is coming anyway, because of the huge business potential and value of HR data.

Julien Legret, global people analytics and HR digital director, Cartier.

There was also a need to overcome the “fear of exposing HR data” – previously only HR had access to the HR dashboard, and there just wasn’t enough trust.

Mr Legret continues that there is a general fear around people analytics – “many people think you need a team of very skilled people” – data scientists, data engineers, cloud engineers etc – but in reality the most important thing is curiosity.

“I don’t need you to work on a prediction model – I need you to have the curiosity to always challenge the figures” – that was Mr Legret’s message to the team.

Starting simple is also key – once you’ve got the foundations and the basics right, then you can move to the next level and keep improving the models and tools.

The future of analytics at Cartier

At UNLEASH World 2023, Mr Legret shares that another core challenge during the analytics transformation at Cartier was upskilling.

“You need to upskill the organization, and you need to start with HR” – “they need to see the vision that you’re going to deploy to the business”, and they need to feel empowered to speak with confidence to the business about the theory (and the tool itself).

But that upskilling needs to be very simple – it needs to be focused on how to navigate the Visier platform (and how to get the most out of it), how to tell a story using data visualization techniques, and the difference between causation and correlation.

For Mr Legret, it was crucial that Cartier’s HR team didn’t see this a short-term project – instead, Visier’s tools needed to be at their fingertips all the time.

Progress is being made here, according to Mr Legret.

And he is very pleased to see that HR is using the people data and analytics through Visier to not just have a better understanding of what’s going on in the organization (and why), but to “come up with corrective measures, as well as monitor the effect”.

“What I’d like to see from my department in the next year is to become a curator around the analysis and look at the bigger picture”. There’s a need to look at the bigger picture, not get lost in the details.

“Visier provides thousands and thousands of KPIs, so you need to look at what makes sense for your business” – for Mr Legret, insights value relies on analysis curation to meet specific business context.

Cartier says there will be a constant evaluation of all data models to ensure the employer is leveraging Visier’s platform to its full potential.