Barclays hired a new people analytics MD from the fashion industry
AI talent in banking is a scarce resource and it's natural to search for people who come from unconventional backgrounds. The most recent hire in Barclays' people analytics division is more unconventional than others; he has had experience in a number of different industries including, most recently, the world of fashion.
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Daniel Hodgkiss joined Barclays in London as an MD and head of people analytics. He spent the last four years at Ralph Lauren as a VP and its head of global data science and AI. Rather than an internally focused analytics role, his responsibilites there predominantly focused on analysing customer data while building scalable and explainable AI capabilities.
Hodgkiss' previous experience was also focused on consumer data across a variety of industries. He was a senior manager at KPMG where he built and led a consumer data team. He founded his own analytics consultancy, and worked in consumer-facing firms like Tesco and Bupa.
Barclays' people analytics team has kept a low profile after controversy regarding its employee tracking tools in 2020. It partnered with analytics firm Sapience to collect data on its employees and assess productivity, but retired Sapeince's tools due to backlash after staff called the tech "creepy." Similar tools are in use at other banks, including JPMorgan's 'Workplace Activity Data Utility' (WADU) system.
Today, the people analytics team seems to be tracking employee information from a variety of sources. An opening for a data engineer working on people analytics pipelines said that the bank collects information from Microsoft's Viva Insights tool, which tracks usage of Microsoft tools, and uses it alongside "employee survey platforms, HR systems, and other enterprise data sources."
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