Learn with Phoebe ยท Data & Analytics

Learn People Analytics with Phoebe

People analytics has a reputation for being soft and is the opposite: every number describes a person who can be counted exactly, so there is no excuse for a rate without its base or a table nobody asked "who is missing" of. These sixteen sessions teach the discipline twice: once as habits anyone can use with no code, on a constructed company whose 210 leavers give three defensible attrition rates, and once as numbers you compute, on 11,301 real employers' pay gap filings. The running finding: at the median employer most of the reported gap is the pyramid, women being 56 percent of the bottom pay band and 40 of the top, and the lever every well-meaning plan reaches for, hire more women, widens the gap when they are hired at the bottom. The bench in the last session fits the ladder live and lets you pull that lever both ways.

16sessions, two tracks
11,301real employers read
3,000on the bench
3bases, one attrition
45min per session

Foundations track ๐Ÿงญ ยท six sessions, no code

For anyone who reads a people dashboard, argues for a headcount, or is handed a pay gap figure in a meeting. Stocks and flows, a rate and its base, the funnel, pay and fairness, surveys as evidence, and the dashboard. Apex, the running company, is constructed and every page says so; the pay gap filings are real.

๐ŸšฐFoundations session 1 ยท start here

Headcount is a stock, attrition is a flow

The identity every dashboard must satisfy, the three bases that turn 210 leavers into 20.5, 22.3 or 24.4 percent, and the photograph problem: an HR export holds only the people who survived to be in it.

โ–ถ Start here
๐Ÿ“Foundations session 2

An attrition rate needs a base

Annualising and what it assumes, rates by entity and department where Sales lost half its people and R&D 7 of 94, small bases that lie, "regretted" as a choice, and a real national benchmark read correctly.

the base under the rate
๐Ÿ”ปFoundations session 3

The hiring funnel

Stages, what each ratio is a ratio of, the two clocks, and adverse impact as one metric with the simulator left to the AI + HR course. Two studies on what names and discretion do to hiring.

a base under every stage
โš–๏ธFoundations session 4

Pay, gaps and fairness

A pay gap is not equal pay. The six figures every UK employer files, 11,315 of them, the pyramid that produces most of the median gap, and the hiring drive that widens it.

composition vs pay
๐Ÿ“‹Foundations session 5

Surveys as evidence

Who answers and who does not, why a five-point average is not a temperature, the anonymity threshold, the engagement figure that drifted 23 to 20 across three editions, and two folk claims with no source.

the response funnel
๐ŸงพFoundations session 6

The people dashboard

One stock and one flow per row, each with its base and date, the honest sentence per row, the metric that became a target, and the fence around what the law says may not be computed.

a base on every row

Data and AI deep-dive track ๐Ÿ”ฌ ยท ten sessions, Python

For the people who own the export and have to defend the number. The three-table model, survival on a snapshot and why it lies, regretted and benchmarked attrition, funnel maths, the pay gap decomposed on 11,301 real filings, pay equity regression, survey psychometrics, workforce planning, what the law forbids, and a bench that refits the ladder live.

๐Ÿ—‚๏ธDeep-dive session 1 ยท start here

The people data model

Employee, position, event. Which table you were given and the test that tells you, headcount as a function of a date, the identity asserted in code, three bases printed together.

โ–ถ Start here
๐Ÿ“‰Deep-dive session 2

Attrition as survival

Tenure as time-to-event, censoring, Kaplan-Meier by hand, and the survivor-table bias measured: 94 percent at one year is too high because nobody who left before the snapshot is in the table.

the photograph bias
๐Ÿท๏ธDeep-dive session 3

Regretted, and benchmarked

Eleven reason categories and the classification that makes 65 percent regretted, departments with their bases, and 120 months of real quits rates fetched from a public API with no key.

monthly is not annual
๐Ÿ”ปDeep-dive session 4

Funnel maths and adverse impact

Conversion per stage, the impact ratio, the four-fifths rule of thumb and the audit New York requires, computed on a constructed funnel, with the simulator left where it lives.

print both rates
๐ŸชœDeep-dive session 5

Pay gap decomposition on 11,301 employers

The filing, the pyramid, the ladder fitted by least squares, composition-only gaps against reported ones, the third of employers who report less than their pyramid, and the placebo.

the ladder
๐Ÿ“ˆDeep-dive session 6

Pay equity regression

Within-band pay on constructed salaries, log pay on grade, tenure and sex, the Oaxaca-Blinder split, and why explained is not the same as justified.

explained is not justified
๐ŸงชDeep-dive session 7

Survey psychometrics

Reliability computed on constructed responses with a planted bad item, response bias, the anonymity threshold, and the engagement figure by edition.

alpha, computed
๐ŸงฎDeep-dive session 8

Workforce planning

The stock-flow model with a plan on it, hiring need as growth plus replacement, Apex's real counts as inputs, and scenarios as ranges rather than points.

growth plus replacement
๐ŸšงDeep-dive session 9

AI on people data, and what the law forbids

GDPR Articles 9 and 22, the EU AI Act's Annex III, New York's audit law, the recruiting tool that learned the past, and discretion against the test.

the fence
๐ŸŽ›๏ธDeep-dive session 10 ยท bench night

The pay gap bench, and defending a number

3,000 real employers, the pyramid, the ladder fitted live, composition against reported, the anti-lever pulled both ways, the break button, and the sentence. Final scorecard.

โ˜… the bench๐Ÿ”’ final scorecard
foundations core bench night

Your passport ๐ŸŽซ

Clear all three quiz questions in a session and it gets stamped. Sixteen stamps means you can reconcile a headcount bridge, write a rate with its base, say who is missing from a table, and defend a pay gap figure by saying what it is made of. Stamps live in this browser only.

What this is not, so you land in the right place ๐Ÿงญ

If your question isGo here instead
How do I run a fair screening process, and what does the four-fifths rule do to a shortlist?AI + HR โ†—
How do I rate, calibrate and talk about performance?Performance Management โ†—
How do I set goals that measure fairly?OKRs and Fair Measurement โ†—
What does the data protection law actually require of me?GDPR โ†— ยท PDPA โ†— ยท AI Governance โ†—
How do I prove that a change caused the attrition to fall?Causal Inference โ†— ยท Experimentation โ†—
I own people numbers, or I am handed them, and I want to know what each one is made of and defend it.you are in the right place

People analytics as a counting discipline. The company is constructed; the filings are real; where a figure comes from a paper or a law the page names it, and where a claim has no measured source the page says that instead of repeating it.

Choose your path ๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ

Three doors into the same conviction: a people number has a stock, a flow, a base and a date, and a table has people missing from it.

๐Ÿงญ I read the dashboard and do not code F1โ†’F2โ†’F3โ†’F4โ†’F5โ†’F6 the six habits, the real filings, no code
๐Ÿ”ฌ I own the export and must defend the number D1โ†’D2โ†’D3โ†’D5โ†’D10 the model, survival, the benchmark, the decomposition, the bench
โš–๏ธ I am accountable for fairness and the law F4โ†’D4โ†’D6โ†’D9โ†’D10 gaps, impact ratios, same-level pay, the fence, the bench

What is honest here ๐Ÿงพ

The pay gap spine is real public data, recomputed for these pages and refitted live on the bench. The company is constructed and says so on every page. Where a figure comes from a paper, a law or a statistics office, the page names it and says whether it was read at source.

ClaimStatus
Every filing count, median, band share, ladder, R2 and placebo figureReally computed from the gov.uk gender pay gap service's 2024 filings (Open Government Licence v3.0); the bench recomputes the deterministic numbers in the browser exactly as the offline build does
The composition-only gap and the anti-lever figuresModelled under a ladder fitted by least squares and equal pay within a band, labelled so wherever they appear
Whether any employer's residual is pay rather than hours or structureNot claimed. The filing shows nothing inside a band
The US quits ratesReally fetched from the Bureau of Labor Statistics public API on 26 September 2026; monthly, US, voluntary quits, and the page says why that is not an annual rate
Apex, its 1,071 staff, its 210 leavers, its funnel, salaries and surveyConstructed, generated with a seed, and the page says so each time
The papers, the regulations and the statistics office figuresNamed with year, journal and volume, and the page says whether each was read at source or through a summary
"People leave managers, not companies" and "replacing someone costs 1.5 to 2 times salary"Not claimed. Neither has a measured source; the page says so

The knowledge map ๐Ÿง 

Both tracks at a glance - hover a session to spotlight its concepts, click any node to jump in.