Why execs stop trusting your HR data: how to earn it back

One questioned number can sink an entire HR report. The moment an operating partner doubts a headcount figure, everything after it gets discounted, because people fixate on the first thing that looks wrong. Dani Woods, an HR leader and people ops strategist who reached global director at 27, has spent her career inside private-equity system consolidations learning to stop that spiral before it starts.

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How do you build executive trust in HR data?

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Start with a number they already believe, then build outward from there. Rather than asking an executive to trust a full report, Dani opens with one figure she knows is accurate and familiar, then layers new data on top of it. The risk she is managing is human wiring. "what humans do is we anchor to that first red flag. So anything else that we have to say after that, they completely ignore." Prove the data slowly instead of asserting it, and a wrong figure never becomes the anchor.

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What should you do when an executive questions your numbers mid-meeting?

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Recover, do not crumble. Dani describes the tiger-chasing-me feeling of being challenged in front of a room, and says credibility rides on the response, not on being flawless. "they expect recovery over perfection." The move is to prep for tougher questions next time, understand how each number is pulled, and own the gap. Executives know systems have limits. What they are watching is whether you fold under pressure.

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Why does system health decide whether your data is accurate?

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Fix the system before you defend the numbers. "accurate data is byproduct to your system health." Dani treats reporting as the output of everything upstream: security, business process flows, data ingestion, and the governance behind them. Walk into an unhealthy system and the front half has to be rebuilt first, which has taken her a full year. A multi-system consolidation can mean 70 integrations to build and every module redone, on a 16-month timeline before the numbers hold. It is why she is openly skeptical when she hears of a Workday go-live done in five days.

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What does an executive see in a turnover report?

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Business risk, not turnover. When a non-HR executive studies a turnover slide, they are scanning for what could break. One comment on a board deck reset how Dani reports: beside the turnover numbers, someone wrote "so how does this impact revenue?" Now she answers that before it is asked. She reads three things: what losing a critical role does to customers and revenue, how headcount tracks against the growth forecast when finance wants 12 percent and the people are not there, and workforce cost as a percentage of revenue. She watched that last figure creep at one company until it ended in a RIF.

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Which questions do HR leaders forget to ask during an acquisition?

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Three that decide everything downstream. Dani gets the date the acquired group moves onto your payroll and benefits system, since it drives the integration calendar. She settles how the job catalogs will align. And she keeps a written record of every retention or bonus promise made during due diligence, because those promises vanish when people leave mid-integration. "That is when I think HR really becomes indispensable is when you're able to map the real cost to any business moves."

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Her throughline fits in one line: "no data, no decisions." The HR leader who can price the risk in a business move before leadership commits to it stops reporting the past and starts shaping what comes next.

Dani Woods (00:02): Imagine you're walking into an FBI interrogation room, right? Like, I've only been in a couple of them so I can't speak to all of them. Would say no data, no decisions. One person just commented, so how does this impact revenue?

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Logan (00:16): Welcome to today's episode of Pulse, the show where we talk with HR leaders who operate in high stakes environments, from M&A to board reporting and everything in between. In today's episode, I speak with Dani Woods, an experienced HR leader, people ops strategist and founder of Lotus Welle. Dani built her career leading HR operations and analytics at companies navigating growth, transformation and private equity ownership. We dig into what it really takes to become a strategic HR partner, including how to build trust in your data, how to communicate with executives under pressure, and why system health is the foundation of everything you report. She also shares what HR pros need to ask during M&A, what the future of HR ops looks like with AI, and why her motto is no data, no decisions. Let's dive in to today's episode.

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Logan (01:06): Dani, do you have anything else you would like the audience to know about you?

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Dani Woods (01:11): Anything else. You probably know me, I do a lot of bold HR technology takes on LinkedIn. I have a deep Workday background but in addition to that I actually started in HR. So I started as an HR assistant and ended up working my way up and being a global director at age 27. So I've learned a lot of different things throughout my career and I'm excited to share that with you guys today.

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Logan (01:37): Awesome. Well, I don't know if this is like the most burning topic in HR, but it's definitely a thing that I want to talk about. And it's how do you build confidence with your data and executives? So HR data, how do you build that confidence with executives?

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Dani Woods (01:54): To think of it as like imagine you're walking into an FBI interrogation room, right? Like, I've only been in a couple of them so I can't speak to all of them. But typically where things start to go wrong is they start to notice something comes out. Like, maybe there's a lie. And then immediately trust is gone. So not that these rooms are just like interrogations, which sometimes they are, but it's kind of similar to that, right? As soon as someone realizes you pull in a report that doesn't make sense or a number and they're questioning it, they're immediately gonna discredit you. And then what humans do is we anchor to that first red flag. So anything else that we have to say after that, they completely ignore.

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So when I think about actually instilling trust is I normally start with like a first touch point, whether that's a number that I know right away that's accurate, and then I'll build off of that. And that way you're not asking them to trust your data, but you're actually, slowly proving it. And then if you don't have it correct, like, you're honest with it and you're not hiding it as well.

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Logan (03:02): That starting with a initial data point, to be honest, I had never thought of it that way because I think probably one of the biggest reasons people just in general, that's like the human nature portion of it, don't trust data is when it's contrarian. Like, if it goes against what they already know, so you kind of have to feed them a little bit of that initial trust building exercise.

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Dani Woods (03:26): And you can go with numbers that, like say it's like just head count. Like, you can go with something that they're already familiar with because if they remember, oh no you reported 900 yesterday, now you're reporting this number, why is that off? That's when you're like, oh maybe like contractors aren't pulled in or like you actually have an example to give to them right away.

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Logan (03:45): Yeah, kind of along those lines, so you're communicating one piece of information that you know is correct. Is trust in data, is it entirely a communication strategy or is there, like, what foundational stuff, is there foundational stuff in there too?

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Dani Woods (04:03): I think, I mean, I think it's both of them. Like, I think it's being the expert in the room and having the credibility already established, but when you're new on, you don't always have that right away. So it's kind of ramping up to that, but no, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to be able to communicate with them. And it's also about what they believe. So let's just say we're gonna go give a headcount report to someone and they think that they're gonna get trailing versus annualized and you don't make it very clear. Now they're looking at the numbers and they're like, wait a minute, no, I want trailing. This report's wrong, the system's broken. Like, it's immediate domino effect that it's not correct. So I think it's also learning how to navigate that pretty fast on what they expect to see. That way you can set the boundaries right away.

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Logan (04:46): Have you gotten hit with a, like, one of those situations where somebody didn't trust it and you were, I don't know, either communicating it wrong or you had bad data? Like, do you have an example of that for you? So it's all the time.

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Dani Woods (05:02): Yeah, all the time. I mean, it has, like, I've implemented, when I went to go implement, you know, HRBench, for example, in the first place, it's brand new. I had to get people on board with it. So, I have had situations where I genuinely feel like a tiger's chasing me internally when I get hit with something, because I could be in middle of a meeting and I get questioned. And I think we immediately, we take it personal. And it's not about...

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Like, your credibility isn't based off of really just you not having it correct. It comes down to your ability to recover from this scenario. So, if you go into it and you realize that the information's bad, then it's immediately, you know, anticipate better questions next time, which you're never gonna be able to anticipate every single person's question, but you can prep answers of how you're gonna be challenged and understand how the information is being pulled, which can be difficult if you're not in the weeds of it. But at the end of the day, they expect recovery over perfection.

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And they understand that systems do have limitations, but what they're really watching for is kind of whether you're gonna like crumble under pressure or if you're just gonna own up to it and fix it moving forward. Yeah, it happens all the time though. It's totally a game. No, no, no.

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Logan (06:11): It just a little bit of a game. I hope it's not just strictly a game of cat and mouse there, but...

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Dani Woods (06:19): It depends on how much you need buy-in pretty fast. So if someone is already, if they have came in and they're a new leader and they've assumed that your data isn't accurate, because speaking of private equity, if we're handling system consolidations and implementations right away, there is a ramp up period before things start to look accurate. So teams already think that it's not correct, the information, but you've got to reteach them over time. So what I did is I created a whole new report catalog with like new naming conventions so people knew right away what was new and what wasn't. And you'd be amazed how fast just a couple times of like consistency actually showed them, this is what you want.

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Logan (07:00): Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about that ramp up period. So like you talked about, like if you have system integrations or you're bringing in new tools or things like, what do you mean by the ramp up period of, I'm guessing, data that's coming through until it gets cleaned? Or you can trust it.

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Dani Woods (07:16): Accurate data is byproduct to your system health. So I like, when I think about the actual like system as a whole and the different phases of different frameworks and the security and the business process flows and ingestion and then how we output which is reporting and analytics typically. When I have walked into companies that aren't as mature I have to fix this front half before I can fix the back half and before that's going to be accurate. It's literally taken a year before.

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Because depending on your system and the actual health of it, and what I mean by that is if you realize you got to build out 70 integrations and you have to redo all of your modules, you're looking even with like a leaner team of people, you're looking at a 16 month period when you're dealing with consolidations from multiple systems. And then if you're acquiring companies on top of that and then you're establishing brand new guidelines and governance behind the scenes, it does take a while.

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That's why I think it's fascinating because when I worked in private equity, I've also seen that it takes way longer to redo a system versus the other day I heard that someone implemented Workday within five days. And I was like, I actually don't know how that's possible. But anyone that's listening to this, please tell me how that is because I'm genuinely so fascinating because I've just handled so many complex, outdated systems that had to get redone in Workday before.

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Logan (08:43): Interesting. So in that, so you talked about 70 integrations and stuff that has to get integrated. How do you think about if you've got your current set of stack and redoing integrations there versus bringing something external in? And maybe even looking at it in any way you want to look at that.

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Dani Woods (09:05): We've done both, like in the past. So we've had tools that depending on we would outweigh, like, it make sense to put everything into a different platform and have everything integrate out of that? And then same with like reporting and analytics. Then do we have it come out of the data warehouse? We would look at that. But then like direct connections with the system. Some of it is, you know, if you want your benefits provider to get information over them to really fast from the single source of truth, you might just want to hook it up to your human capital system.

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So where I've seen us go into more of that other stack is the sales forces of the world, different hubs, all of our other tools, and then we would integrate our human capital system into that, but anything else that is pretty that we need right away, like an ATS and things like that, we would do out of our human capital system.

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Logan (09:54): Gotcha. Okay, I want to take us a little bit out of the technical weeds here of systems and back to a little bit more, you know,

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Dani Woods (10:00): We could talk all day about integrations. I'm just kidding.

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Logan (10:03): I spent time in, not HR operations, but marketing operations, dealing with tools all the time, and I could get into the weeds of that. And so, I don't know, if building confidence in, yes, there is a technical component to building confidence in HR data for execs, but I want to get back to a little bit of the communication strategy there of the managing up and really, what are the data points that you see across that non-HR folks want to see about happening with people data that people should start thinking about communicating.

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Dani Woods (10:35): Yeah, so I remember when I was putting together a board deck, I saw one comment on it and we had given screenshots of turnover, different percentages, our higher count terminations, and one person just commented, so how does this impact revenue? And it was actually really spot on because that's actually the real filter that we do use.

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And I think that non-HR, right, they look at turnover, but what they're really doing is they're scanning for risks. And so does HR. But we're looking at like, can we break, right? So the first thing that I think about is like the critical turnover. So if you lose a salesperson, what does that mean for the business? You're not just losing head count, but what does that mean for your current customers and revenue?

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And then the second is probably your headcount versus the actual forecast. So we would compare like our current state or our hiring plan compared to like what the projections are because a finance is saying I want 12 percent growth and we don't actually have the individuals to cover that. The gap becomes very apparent. So it's, see the consistent theme of that over and over.

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And then third I would say like the workforce cost as a percentage of the actual revenue. And the reason I say this is really important is because it allows us to start reviewing trends and where we need to go and also warning signs. For example, one company, we saw the numbers creep up a little bit too much and they were disproportional and it resulted in a RIF. So it really comes down to risk, readiness and cost. And that's why they care so much about turnover being accurate is because we're going to a stage where it's not about just spitting out the number, but it's the story about it and what is going to happen in the future if we don't do anything about these patterns now.

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Logan (12:23): Yeah, that's awesome. And I think one of the biggest things, like just tying to revenue, like in business impact is in just thinking in that lens. And it's such a shift, I think, because I mean, a lot of times even in marketing, like we see that and just making that particular shift. So I'm going to give you a rapid fire question here. So you're in a PE back company and you just inherited messy data. What's your first move?

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Dani Woods (12:49): Ooh. I mean, it's a guarantee you're gonna get some messy data in there. Would say

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Logan (12:53): Okay, so that always exists.

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Dani Woods (12:55): The first thing I would look at, let's just say we're gonna look at a report. I would look at the different gaps of different things that aren't pulling in. Let's just say that your report is accurate. So if we're finding out also the patterns of what do we want to report off of and then what decisions do we want to make is how I typically start off. Because you can look at it and you're like, don't even know where to start, but the questions that are gonna come out of this is the compliance side of it and then you're going to take a look at like what are we doing with all the information in the system in the first place and there are bare-bones things that you need which is like compensation.

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So your full compensation structure, not all of it needs to be in your system of record, but if you're going to continually report off of, you know, benefits costs to employees you've got to have a mechanism to have that in place in the first place. So that's how I really determine how to build the structure to be able to get the data that I want in the first place and a lot of it came from the worker and their compensation at first. It was like the most important part to get right.

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Logan (13:56): Yeah, I like what you said about decide what decisions you want to make, kind of thinking about the end goal first. So the next thing I kind of wanted to dive into as far as the topic goes is we wanted to get Dani's crystal ball of the future. And what does the future of HR analytics and operations look like according to Dani?

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Dani Woods (14:20): Yeah, I mean, because everyone has an opinion on this one. So when I think about

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Logan (14:25): I think they do.

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Dani Woods (14:25): Like, when I think about like what HR operations used to look like to me is I was printing out benefit elections. I was helping people enroll. I was doing manual offer letters and that's why I do not take for granted software these days, but employment verifications. You know, all those manual tasks, I can see that going away. However, like, my accountant said it very perfectly in the world of AI too and how we kind of think about using it is it's here to do our job. Like, to help us with it. It's here to accelerate it. It's to do the parts that we don't want to do. But what it doesn't take away from is our actual, the face of us and being with employees and talking face to face with individuals and working with them and being able to predict things ahead of time and look at the anomalies that AI is not able to catch right now.

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So I see it as those more manual tasks. Are they going to go away? Absolutely. They're already starting to go away. But you're going to see more of the storytellers, the system architects in HR operations. Instead of, do this employment verification, do this task, how about redesign it, work with technology. And I could almost see HR operations and HR technology more and more coming together at companies because we're already seeing that in private equity and that's been a thing. So they're not siloed anymore. They're really becoming integrated into actual technology and maybe even technology is redefined too of where it's going to be. And the policies and then the technology to support it.

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Logan (15:58): How is that stuff coming together in private equity right now?

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Dani Woods (16:02): I'm seeing more and more of the HR operations and HR technology report into the same leader. So it's like one vision,

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Logan (16:09): And what leader do they, what leader are they typically reporting into?

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Dani Woods (16:10): One roadmap.

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Logan (16:14): It vary across, or?

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Dani Woods (16:16): I'm seeing it, I mean, I've seen it vary from, like, you can have total rewards leaders see it, operations. If you have, you know, a vice president of human resources, that's the role, or the vice president of operations and technology. And that's more of like your VP of HR. And then you have your total rewards team and your HR business partners, and you have recruiting as well. And then I've also seen the teams, you know, depending on how flat the org is, report right into the CHRO. Like, I mean, I personally have in my past probably spent more time reporting into executives than not in technology. So if it's a technology leader then they may just start overseeing operations and report directly to the CHRO.

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Logan (16:59): Interesting. Okay. So kind of given that lens of what you're thinking for the future, how do you see like specific roles evolving? So like actual HR roles evolving, probably particularly in ops and HR analysts.

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Dani Woods (17:15): So, as far as, I think those manual tasks that they're already doing, that's gonna go away and they're gonna start working on the forecasting. They may look into more of like dynamic job catalogs and like how our positions continually evolved and do more of like maybe even workforce planning integrated with it. So I think it's a combination of also higher level systems thinking that all of them are gonna have and risks radar with it too. Like, we're starting to see this in the business. What is the actual impact of it? Because like we said, we're tying things to revenue. So if we're starting to see people leave, what does that actually mean for us and what are we going to do about it?

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So I actually think they're going to have a lot more time like freed up. Even HRS analysts. So I have seen now, you know, they have platforms with AI tools to actually help Workday admins. So things that used to take so much design and configuration, if we don't have the tools to able to tell us exactly this is how it's configured, you're gonna see more of like the senior analysts that can handle change management and they can build, and they can build more because now they have a tool that's actually helping them. So it's just gonna see, I'm gonna see more I think like complex projects that they're gonna start spearheading. So I think everyone's gonna kind of level up too.

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Logan (18:33): Yeah, that's what I would imagine. I mean, do you have any specific AI use cases or agents that you've either built or seen built that would be helpful for people listening in?

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Dani Woods (18:45): I think right away, something that helps answer basic questions is a no-brainer. It's going to help save time, something that's going to track the different patterns that you're seeing. That way you can fix processes to re-engineer them and then have less questions from them. I think we're going to start to see more and more of them. I've done chatbots and that's helped significantly. And especially with the change management, if it's very easy because people live in ChatGPT, so for them to use a chatbot, that's very simple.

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Logan (19:16): Yeah, I would imagine one that's probably super pertinent is a chat bot for open enrollment during that period. And I would imagine that really helps field a lot of good questions or a lot of questions or at least direct to the right place. Yeah.

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Dani Woods (19:28): Yeah, and they've had those tools for years. I haven't seen it where it's, I mean, I'm sure companies have the actual chatbot in the open enrollment screen, but like the decision tools, you know, they've had those for years. But you've got to click and then you've got to go to another portal to be able to see it and who's doing that when they don't have an attention span.

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Logan (19:47): Yeah. Yeah, all of our attention spans have shortened.

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Dani Woods (19:53): Speaking of a touch of span, this is now over. No.

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Logan (19:56): Just the abrupt cut of this. But because we're not going to do that, I'm going to toss another rapid fire question. So you're an HR leader and your company was just acquired by, it could be private equity, another company. Like, what are the less common questions that you think HR leaders should be asking in that situation?

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Dani Woods (20:20): Yeah, so especially on the system side, I have seen this where everything was driven off one simple question, and that's what day are they coming over into our payroll and benefits system? And that is going to drive so many downstream workflows. So I think that's not even answered right away. I mean, some depending on the deal, they have it structured so you grandfather them in. But it's not always apparent to HR professionals, but your tech professional is asking you because that's system consolidations and that's change management. You got to those right away.

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And then you have the job catalog alignment. So they do, we do ask like the questions of like, hey, are they gonna come into our system? Are we gonna mirror up their positions? What is it gonna look like? And especially in the world of AI and the fact that everything is evolving so fast, I think it's gonna be the, this is what we see the company doing, this is how we are gonna put them in seat right away, versus maybe putting them where they were at and then waiting some time and then reshaping it. So I think it's gonna be a little bit more dynamic.

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And then promises during due diligence. This is a really big one because sometimes HR will say, yes, you're gonna get this retention bonus or yes, you're gonna get your full bonus grandfathered in and... That's not always how it works. And then we lose individuals, unfortunately, during M&A, and we have no background knowledge on any promises made. So that's one that you need to get right away.

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And then... Like, I would start asking questions about their components, like where are you operating in? How many different comp plans are we looking at? Do we have expats? Where are the contracts? Those don't show up right away. And you'd be amazed that it might seem like, no, you need to have it right away and obvious, and it is not.

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Logan (22:16): Those are all really good. So we will have those questions for everybody in a follow-up if you want to have those, if you're getting ready to go through an M&A process. So we've had quite a bit of chat here. I want to kind of just let you summarize some of the stuff that we've talked about here. What should an HR leader, an HR professional take away today that they could do tactically now that would be like maybe one or two things in order to be a more strategic partner to the business? Like thinking more like the business thinks overall.

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Dani Woods (22:57): I would say no data, no decisions. And if you can remember that, you've got to think beyond systems. You've got to think about the people, costs, and innovation moving forward. And what I mean by that is like, let's just say the old question was, hey, can we start business up in Asia, for example? And instead of asking that legal entity question, where I think that we're going to start seeing it is, here's like the actual hidden cost to doing that. Here's the talent risk that we have. Here's the compliant risk that we may not have priced in. So you're one step ahead. You're talking about how you can actually accelerate an M&A deal. What are going to be the trade-offs that don't double the cost? And that is when I think HR really becomes indispensable is when you're able to map the real cost to any business moves, whether that's reporting analytics or just like the day-to-day decisions that happen.

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Logan (23:50): That's good. And that's a great little tidbit. No data, no decisions, to...

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Dani Woods (23:56): No data, no decisions.

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Logan (23:58): ...let that go. Do you have any other advice for HR professionals who are kind of early in their career and they're being asked to help either compile decks for a QBR or help with the reporting and data that people are going to use, you know, kind of up the organization?

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Dani Woods (24:17): I would say find something you're really good at. Like, point blank. You want to get paid for something, you've got to have the expertise immediately to do it, right? And you don't have to listen to other people that are going to tell you that it's going to take 10 years to do that. If I would have listened to them, I think I would still be a senior analyst and I would have never made it to where I did. But with that becomes there's a lot of challenges and you are going to continually be, you know, you're going to be shoved to the ground and you're going to have to figure it out and you have to get back up.

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But what I really found is incredibly, like, it actually comes from filling the rooms with your knowledge and your power. However, it's not always with words. And I would get told at first when I was being coached I need to sit on my hands and I would be in meetings. So like, I have the answer to that. Nope. I know exactly what that is, but this isn't that hard. Can we just wrap this up? Like, that would be it, it'd be old, old Dani. And now it's more of remaining silent and listening to them because at the end of the day, it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

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And that was the biggest thing is I had to figure that out the very, very hard way. And now I tell clients to this day, if you ever want to figure out who actually probably is the most knowledgeable and powerful person at the table, they are not sitting at the head of the table. They are probably the one in the corner that is a little bit more quiet, that is paying attention to what everyone else has to say. And they say one sentence and everyone listens.

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Logan (25:47): Yeah, that is true. And the further you get along in your career, the more you see a lot of that happen. And I too have had the sit on your hands, the need to sit on your hands experience. So I can empathize with that.

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Dani Woods (25:59): Now I just fold them, like, I'll fold them in meetings. I won't like sit on my hands, you know, and make it obvious, but I'm, you know, I'm just sitting there like super impatient, but you would never be able to know.

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Logan (26:11): Yeah, awesome. Well, Dani, thank you so much for joining us today and getting us through these tips. I jotted down quite a few. Running through, does it impact revenue? What decisions do you want to make when thinking about your data? Looking at promises during due diligence and no data, no decision. All great, great stuff and great takeaways for the audience. Is there anything else you'd like to leave the audience with? Where would you like the audience to connect with you?

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Dani Woods (26:37): Yeah. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I love doing coffee chats and getting to know each one of you. And thank you all for tuning into us today.

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Logan (26:46): Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Pulse, the podcast that has real conversations with HR leaders linking people to performance. HRBench is the people analytics platform that turns HR data into business strategy. It connects to all your tools, HRIS, ATS, payroll, surveys, whatever you're using. In just a few clicks, you get over 45 metrics instantly visualized in boardroom ready dashboards, benchmarked by industry and company size. Book a demo at HRbench.com and we'll build you a custom benchmark report using your data.