Proving Ground

How media giant Gannett uses HR Analytics and AI to enhance the employee experience

When it arrived on the media scene in 1982, according to the Poynter Institute, USA TODAY became known as “the traveler’s newspaper.” Hotel guests could plan on a copy waiting beneath their doors first thing in the morning, and the brightly colored, easy-to-consume format and writing became standard issue for people on the go despite being dismissed by legacy print news outlets as unserious.

The USA TODAY Network has been awarded 96 Pulitzer Prizes.

The 2019 merger of GateHouse Media and Gannett created the nation’s largest newspaper publishing company, centering USA TODAY in their ecosystem. Founded in 1906, today’s Gannett (NYSE: GCI) is a diversified media company that delivers content, marketing solutions, and events. Their current portfolio of media brands includes the USA TODAY Network, comprised of USA TODAY and more than 200 domestic publications, as well as Newsquest, a wholly owned subsidiary operating in the United Kingdom. Gannett’s diverse portfolio also includes a Digital Marketing Solutions (DMS) business, LocalIQ, and the USA TODAY Ventures events division.

Steven DelVecchio

“USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network seek to inspire, inform, and connect audiences as a sustainable growth-focused media and digital marketing solutions company,” said Steven DelVecchio, Gannett’s VP of People Operations & Analytics. “In Q1 of this year, according to ComScore, Gannett averaged 134 million monthly unique visitors across their news sites, and a workforce of over 12,000 employees across five countries.”

“Gannett’s People Operations and Analytics team is comprised of two separate, but very much related functions with overarching objectives to educate internal partners with related data and trends and present meaningful data to our stakeholders to better inform decision-making,” he explained. Gannett employees, he stressed, are at the center of those decisions, as well as the technology side of the company’s operations functions. “We continuously strive to improve the employee experience and our technology empowers our employees to easily handle common tasks such as looking for benefits information or confirming an employment verification so that they can focus on work and other priorities.”In addition to the people analytics function, DelVecchio oversees the HR technology function which includes their HR/Payroll system and employee life cycle management (ELCM). The team curates and examines the end-to-end experience of an employee and helps to inform the employee support services group, which serves as a one-stop shop for answering any employee questions that may arise during their tenure.

People analytics provide meaningful insights that inform business decisions, such as understanding turnover rates to find opportunities to improve retention. That data can connect the dots between when an employee is leaving the organization and what that means ultimately to Gannett’s bottom line, culture, and employee experience.

“We try to surface information and potential issues in a proactive way,” DelVecchio said. These analytics also highlight positives that can elevate what is working well to aid leadership in their relentless drive towards better company-wide performance.”

“The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impactful when implementing strategically and with human oversight as it can provide visibility to an analytic or metric, then contextualize that data to inform decision-makers on the importance behind that analytic and why it should be measured. There’s a need to have consistency in measuring analytics to show change over time,” he added. “We take all sorts of data, simplify, and condense it into an easy-to-digest format so we are accurately and easily informing leaders on key information to help them keep it at the forefront of their mind.”

As it relates to DelVecchio’s purview, AI is used operationally to help employees obtain basic information through a chatbot, as well as reaching the contact center during off-hours as Gannett is a 24/7 operation. On the analytics side, DelVecchio’s division is using AI to do some predictive modeling on trends.

One such use is projecting their diversity and inclusion statistics over time based on population statistics. “We can see how the U.S. population is projected to trend over, say, the next five years, based on publicly available data and can then combine that with our existing turnover and hiring data so that we can be ahead of the curve on where we need to focus to continue to drive towards our Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity goals,” he said.

These efforts are designed to be reflective of current and future employee demographics to give leaders on every rung of the ladder the information they need to improve inclusive representation across our teams through the talent pipeline, sourcing, and hiring perspectives. “A combination of making that information visible and holding ourselves accountable to it also provides the tools and insights required to help drive our evolution,” he said. “It’s just one example of the work that we do in our group.”

Building a corporate culture platformed on analytics requires an ongoing commitment from the people resources team as well as the executive team because investing in an analytics function requires year-over-year progress and it may take time to realize success and a shift toward an analytical mindset.

“In our experience it takes a couple of annual cycles of setting goals, measuring performance against those goals, and then adjusting and measuring again so we can prove the positive impact on the business,” DelVecchio said. Driving interest in and continual investment in the analytics function helps to boost confidence in its value. “Then it organically grows as people understand and appreciate its value.”

By using people analytics to understand the interactions with the organization’s operations function, DelVecchio’s division is well-equipped to help fill the gaps in the knowledge base needed to stay on the cutting edge of redefining and improving the employee experience.

Analytical skills are becoming more of a necessity across all roles within human resources. “A top priority for the analytics functions are to be training and building that skill set for our HR business partners and other frontline HR staff members so that they can continue to develop,” DelVecchio concluded.

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Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is a diversified media company with expansive reach at the national and local level dedicated to empowering and enriching communities. We seek to inspire, inform, and connect audiences as a scalable, growth focused media and digital marketing solutions company. We endeavor to deliver essential content, marketing solutions, and experiences for curated audiences, advertisers, consumers, and stakeholders by leveraging our diverse teams and suite of products to enrich the local communities and businesses we serve.

Our current portfolio of trusted media brands includes the USA TODAY NETWORK, comprised of the national publication, USA TODAY, and local media organizations in the United States, and Newsquest, a wholly owned subsidiary operating in the United Kingdom. Our digital marketing solutions brand, LocaliQ, uses innovation and software to enable small and medium-sized businesses to grow, and USA TODAY NETWORK Ventures, our events division, creates impactful consumer engagements, promotions, and races.

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