Property Council of Australia’s HR lead says the real power of people analytics isn't in the numbers – it's in what they tell you
For many HR teams, people analytics still means pulling together an engagement score once a year and presenting it to the executive team.
Natasha Teychenne, head of people, culture and learning at Property Council Australia (PCA), thinks that approach is leaving too much on the table.
"There's no point just reporting an engagement result or retention result," Teychenne said. "It's actually being able to articulate what that is telling you – what insights you can draw from that."
Six years into her role at the industry body, which advocates on behalf of Australia's property sector, Teychenne has been quietly building a more intentional approach to workforce data – one grounded less in sophisticated tools and more in asking better questions of the information already at hand.
From numbers to narrative
PCA is still in the early stages of its people analytics journey. The focus has been on a handful of core areas: engagement, retention, and hiring. But rather than treating each as a separate report, the organisation has started connecting the dots between them.
"Just looking at engagement scores on their own doesn't tell you much," said Teychenne. "But when you start looking at them alongside retention or exit feedback, you get a much clearer picture of what might be going on – what some of those systemic issues might be."
That shift from reporting to diagnosis has had tangible results. Engagement has risen steadily over recent years, and that improvement has tracked directly with a reduction in turnover.
"Our attrition has improved and that's correlated directly with higher engagement as well," she said.
The organisation uses engagement survey analytics to shape both a whole-of-organisation plan and targeted approaches at the team level – with each intervention tied to specific gaps identified in the data, rather than a generic action plan.
Making the case to leadership
One of the more significant changes Teychenne has observed is how data-backed insights have changed the quality of conversations at the executive and board level.
It's a dynamic many HR leaders will recognise – the challenge of advocating for people-related investment in environments where the language of leadership is often financial.
For Teychenne, having data has been less about proving a point and more about reframing how people decisions are made. On the hiring side, that has meant looking beyond traditional metrics like time-to-fill.
"We're moving past just time to fill and starting to ask what good looks like for the longer term," she said. "Are people sticking with us? How are they performing? Did we hire the right fit?"
Advice for HR leaders starting out
For HR professionals who are considering – or just beginning – a move towards more analytical practice, Teychenne offered three practical starting points.
The first is to anchor the work in a problem, not a platform. "Start with the problem, not the data," she explained.
"It's really easy to get caught up in tools or dashboards but unless you're clear on what you're trying to shift – whether that's reducing attrition, improving engagement in a particular team or lifting quality of hire – it's just not going to land."
The second is to start small. "You don't need a perfect data set to begin," Teychenne said. "Even looking at something like engagement alongside turnover can give you enough to start having better conversations."
The third, and perhaps most underestimated, is translation. Data only moves the needle if the people receiving it know what to do with it.
"Data only drives outcomes if people understand it and know what to do with it," she said. "The 'so what' matters just as much as the numbers."
It's a reminder that the value of people analytics isn't locked inside a dashboard. It lives in the conversation that follows.
