Within the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS), Indy was appointed project lead for an initiative aimed at reducing workload. The project was launched in response to the results of the Ministry’s biannual employee survey, in which workload consistently emerged as an area requiring improvement. By leveraging data, the team sought to gain deeper insight into the challenges, their impact on employees, and potential solutions for the organization.

Throughout the project, Indy encountered several challenges. One of the first difficulties was defining what workload actually means. In addition, there was resistance from decision-makers. Initial proposals to introduce organization-wide targets and objectives were rejected because they were perceived as too prescriptive and because individual departments had limited influence over certain causes of workload. As an alternative, Indy proposed turning these targets into guidelines, allowing individual departments to decide for themselves which level of ambition they wanted to pursue. Despite these adjustments, the proposal still did not fully align with the expectations of all stakeholders. This demonstrates that data-driven and scientific approaches are not always automatically embraced in practice.

Even so, the project produced a positive outcome. It sparked a broader discussion that ultimately led to a request to inventory all workload-related initiatives across the core department. This shows that even when an original proposal is not fully accepted, it can still generate valuable conversations, positive outcomes, and new initiatives.

Below, we summarize the key insights from their HR data approach.

One of the key takeaways from the webinar was the importance of understanding your target audience throughout the entire project. The close collaboration between the organization and the HR analyst is often a critical success factor. During the project, Indy was confronted with feedback from the governing body, which indicated that they did not recognize themselves in the challenges related to workload that were being presented. This allowed him to intervene at an early stage. He adjusted the scope of the project from an organization-wide approach to a single core department and focused on actions that could genuinely influence workload. This experience once again highlights the importance of not only presenting analyses, but also of understanding and mapping the human dimension behind the issue. Data alone is not enough—it is equally important to understand how people experience the challenges being addressed.

Another crucial insight that emerged during the webinar was the importance of storytelling. It is the key to communicating the results and recommendations of an analytics project to stakeholders within the organization. Delivering the findings through a verbal presentation gave Indy the opportunity to address concerns and resistance directly. By building a coherent narrative and guiding his audience through the story step by step, he was able to demonstrate sensitivity to and understanding of the challenges associated with reducing workload. Storytelling is not only about presenting the facts and figures; it is also about highlighting the human side of the issue. By doing so, it encourages broader understanding, engagement, and acceptance of the proposed actions.

A third important insight discussed during the webinar was the value of qualitative data in research. In the context of this project, workload proved to be a highly subjective concept that varies from one employee to another. As a result, subjective qualitative data was essential for understanding and defining workload in a meaningful way. To collect this qualitative data, Indy included several open-ended questions that invited employees to share their views on the possible causes of workload and potential solutions. This demonstrated the value of gathering and analyzing qualitative data when addressing complex HR challenges, where understanding human experiences and perceptions plays a central role.

Qualitative data is still too often underestimated because it does not provide the hard numbers that many analyses rely on. However, overlooking it means missing an opportunity to add depth, context, and nuance to your findings and conclusions.

The webinar with Indy Wijngaards offers valuable insights into an effective HR analytics approach. Below is a brief summary of the key takeaways:

1. Continuous involvement: understanding your target audience from start to finish is crucial. Close collaboration between the organization and the HR analyst is a key success factor in ensuring the project delivers meaningful results.
2. Storytelling: storytelling is a powerful way to make your findings and recommendations understandable and relevant to stakeholders.
3. The value of qualitative data: the importance of qualitative data is often underestimated, yet it can provide a rich source of deeper insights into complex HR-related challenges.

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