Designed for Impact: Simplicity, Scalability, and Sustainability in People Analytics

Paul Mayfield, AVP Data Science, Head of People Analytics,Humana

Paul Mayfield, AVP Data Science, Head of People Analytics,Humana

Like many others, I’m an accidental HR leader. My journey to this position has been anything but linear, yet every step has uniquely prepared me for this moment. I grew up captivated by the weather, especially winter storms and pursued meteorology at Western Kentucky University. However, midway through my junior year, after job shadowing and reflecting on the lifestyle of a weather forecaster, I realized it wasn’t the right fit. I pivoted to a math major and added a secondary education degree. Teaching and coaching have always come naturally to me. While at Western, I paid for college by coaching AAU swimming and found joy in helping students learn.

After graduation and marrying my wife, we relocated to Charlotte, NC, where I taught high school math. I taught nearly every course except AP Calculus, but my passion was working with upperclassmen struggling in foundational math. In those classrooms, I mastered the art of verbal storytelling and scaffolding complex mathematical concepts to help students grasp insights that improved their performance.

“All the reports and dashboards we build and are currently refurbishing in Power BI follow three design principles: simplicity, scalability and sustainability.”

After five years, I made the difficult decision to leave teaching and enter corporate America. Charlotte’s financial sector offered opportunities, and through a friend’s recommendation, I was offered a job in Bank of America’s Market Operations department. I embraced networking within BofA, meeting people across departments to learn and grow. These connections led to roles in market operations, balance sheet management, merchant services and consumer and business banking. During this time, I earned a Master’s in Business Analytics from UNC Wilmington and immediately applied those skills.

One pivotal moment came when I was invited to work on a dashboarding project using Tableau. It was clear I had a gift for transforming complex data into digestible visual stories. That project launched my career in analytics and storytelling. I became known for delivering insights that drove impact.

In 2023, while visiting family in Louisville during Thanksgiving, I struck up a conversation at the pool after swimming some laps with an executive from Humana who asked to speak to me about a role open on his team. A week later, we connected and he explained the position was in People Analytics. He described how my background in teaching, banking and data storytelling made me an ideal candidate. He emphasized Humana was data rich, and he was looking for a leader who could have an impact within HR and with business leaders via storytelling. That resonated deeply with me.

Today, I lead a team of 30 talented People Analytics specialists at Humana. We focus on associate listening, business consulting, solving complex problems, driving culture and engagement, building tools in Workday and Power BI, enabling HR data and automation and stewarding data governance. From my first day leading the team, our mission has been to be a team of exceptionally effective storytellers. Whether through consultations, emails, PowerPoint decks or visualization tools, we aim to scaffold complex associate data into understandable and easy to consume concepts.

Our visualization tools reflect this philosophy. All the reports and dashboards we build and are currently refurbishing in Power BI follow three design principles: simplicity, scalability and sustainability.

Simplicity means our tools are intuitive and follow consistent design and visualization standards. If you've used one of our tools, you can immediately navigate any of them. This continuity enhances the user experience by reducing the learning curve and making it easier for users to locate and interpret the data they need. A unified design approach across tools fosters confidence and efficiency, allowing leaders to focus on insights rather than navigation.

Scalability allows us to enhance existing tools rather than build new ones from scratch. In a world overflowing with dashboards and reports, our intentional design approach enables seamless integration of new data elements into existing frameworks. This means users can interact with familiar themes while expanding their understanding through enriched data stories. It also reduces redundancy and promotes consistency across business units.

Sustainability ensures our tools can evolve with industry changes and innovations like AI. Rather than rebuilding from the ground up when new requirements emerge, our tools are designed for iteration and adaptation. This future-ready approach allows us to respond quickly to business needs, regulatory shifts or technological advancements, without sacrificing continuity or usability.

These principles empower our stakeholders with actionable insights. By simplifying complex data, we enable leaders to make informed decisions that positively impact associates, members and patients. People Analytics at Humana exists to illuminate the path forward, connect data to purpose and provide insights that lead to impact, so every leader can make decisions that elevate our people and our business.

My journey, from forecasting weather to forecasting workforce trends, has been rooted in storytelling. Whether in a classroom or the office, the ability to translate complexity into clarity is what drives impact. Impact is the true power of People Analytics.