Scatter Podcast interview with Hayden Balow, Organizational Development Analyst at Blizzard Entertainment. In the mid-1990's, I was a fanatic of the Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft series so I really enjoyed hearing how Hayden's team utilizes research, statistics, and people analytics to make the Blizzard work environment better for their employees. Hayden attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth for his Bachelor of Applied Science in Psychology, and he received his Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Lamar University. Hayden kicked off his career as a People Data Analyst at Zappos and later moved to Blizzard, so he's got solid academic and practical experiences in people analytics.

I am personally very interested in people analytics so I enjoyed understanding the kinds of problems that are being tackled by I-O Psychologists and People Analytics professionals. Hayden describes some of the latest trends in this space including how NLP and organizational network analyses are being used to understand employee sentiment, organizational outcomes, drivers for churn, ROI on company trainings, etc. Hayden wrote an extended list of people analytics resources that are posted on my blog so be sure to check that out and enjoy the show!

Links:Hayden's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haydenbalow/SoCal People Analytics group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13609176/Extended Show Notes & Resources: https://www.javierorraca.com/scatterpodcast/episode-023/