Productivity Analytics: Optimising Workforce Design
Practical lessons from Corning’s plants and R&D labs
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Track
Impact
This session explores how people analytics can turn workforce design choices into real productivity gains. Helena Tao shares how Corning defined a small set of shared measures, then used them to guide staffing, skills, and collaboration changes in two different settings: a manufacturing plant and an R&D lab. She explains how HR and business leaders aligned on measures, applied analytics to uncover barriers, and translated insights into practical actions that improved outcomes. You’ll leave with a framework for defining productivity metrics, examples of workforce optimisation in action, and a 90-day starter plan to make it work in your own organisation.
This session will explore
- Defining 4–6 productivity measures that leaders accept and use
- Plant case: onboarding, training, and staffing that improved output
- R&D case: using ONA to enhance “scientific productivity” and cross-lab collaboration
- Workforce design choices: balancing roles, skills, and collaboration patterns.
Learning objectives
- Identify practical productivity metrics relevant to your business context
- Link people analytics to tangible workforce design improvements
- Apply ONA to address collaboration and innovation bottlenecks
- Start small with a 90-day plan to test and refine productivity analytics.
Helena Tao
HR Director, People Analytics · Corning Incorporated
Why this is on the agenda
Organisations face pressure to do more with limited resources while protecting quality and innovation. Productivity analytics offers a way forward – blending HR, operational, and collaboration data to guide smarter workforce design. Corning’s approach shows how to move from measurement to action, linking workforce choices to both immediate efficiency and long-term capability.