Influencing With Data

Bill Yost and Jennie Huang lead a hands-on workshop on the step where people analytics most often stalls: the handoff from a defensible analysis to a decision someone actually makes. Participants work with a purpose-built synthetic dataset covering two years of sentiment, attrition, and headcount across departments and work models. The dataset contains three deliberately planted storylines — including a sentiment measure that leads attrition by two quarters — so participants practice distinguishing signal from noise and leading indicators from lagging outcomes on data with a known ground truth. Teams build a single chart or slide, present it, and receive structured peer critique; they then reframe the same finding for a different audience and level of authority. A final segment gives each team an AI-generated memo about the same workforce and asks them to identify its unsupported causal claims, missing context, and provenance gaps. The workshop advances the science of I-O psychology by treating analytic communication as a skill with testable standards rather than a matter of taste, and it connects directly to the evidence base on data storytelling, dashboard design, and algorithm aversion and appreciation in managerial decision making. Attendees leave with a reusable narrative structure, a critique rubric, and a written guide for reviewing analytic outputs. This program was selected because nearly every SIOP member working in an applied analytics setting is limited less by method than by influence.

Workshop Facilitators

Bill Yost, Netflix
Jennie Huang, Netflix