Merit Analytics Group

Services

As a niche, women-owned business specializing in people analytics and planning, we recognize that one of our key differentiators is our unique perspective, which both drives our passion for the work that we do and allows us to quickly pinpoint analytic services (highlighted below) to best meet the needs of our clients. We also pride ourselves on embedding knowledge-transfer as a core pillar of our approach, demystifying people analytics and planning to help build bridges with the business and corporate functions. We follow our MERIT Mantra in executing our engagements, ensuring that we deliver insights that are: Measurable, Effective, Realistic, Inclusive and Targeted for each organization.

Analytics

Sometimes organizations need the help of an expert to accelerate progress, gain access to key skills or just supplement an internal team's bandwidth. We are prepared to act as an extension of your team, whether you need support for descriptive statistics or a predictive modeling effort. From informing the people strategy to up-front data work or analytic insights and report development, we have the experience to deliver results.

Pay Equity

Evolving global regulations, reporting expectations and demands for transparency are bringing pay equity commitments to the forefront. We strive to be transparent and effective in our approach to pay equity analysis, going beyond black-box technology, to help organizations understand pay drivers, optimize pay practices and best allocate limited budgets to get the greatest impact.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We are committed to helping organizations understand the value of all forms of diversity — ensuring organizations have the metrics and root-cause insights needed to deliver on broad-based efforts to drive a diverse, equitable and inclusive work environment that not only motivates and engages people but also generates higher organizational returns.

Reporting

Whether you are just starting out or reviewing your approach, we have successfully implemented and sustained people reporting and dashboard efforts for organizations from 500 to 500,000 employees. Our focus on intuitive, user-friendly data visualizations allows organizations to enhance efforts in both day-to-day reporting and Board and leadership presentations.

Planning

Many organizations struggle to implement people planning effectively not because they lack a need for planning but because success requires business acumen, experience and adaptability. We build on unique business models and use cases to deliver a more tailored and effective approach for both near-term headcount/ budget/ position management and more strategic, longer-term people planning.

Technology Enablement

Having both built proprietary SaaS solutions and implemented third-party software, we know that it is critical to manage what's in place, while continually looking for opportunities to enhance functionality and provide intuitive, new capability quickly and effectively, no matter what platform you use.

Contributions

Aligned with our mission, we are active contributors to the HR community through publications and speaking engagements, which have included:

Industries

Our experience spans all major industries, making us poised to connect people issues and opportunities to metrics that have the most MERIT like:

Consumer Products

What skills will deliver the next generation of products to address unmet consumer needs?

Education

What drives student acceptance and enrollment rates from an institutional talent perspective?

Energy

To what degree are we impacted by an aging workforce in key skills and knowledge transfer concerns?

Financial services

Do we have the digital skills to target broader solutions to key and new customers?

Health systems

How is the changing landscape of healthcare going to impact our future talent needs?

High tech

How do we “win” in the next generation of artificial intelligence?

Hospitality

How do we attract and retain workers to generate better profitability and performance?

Manufacturing

How do we attract critical engineering talent, given the competition from other industries?

Pharmaceuticals

How will the regulatory landscape shape and be shaped by what we do and what are the talent implications?

Professional Services

How do we create inclusive, sustainable and attractive career paths to compete against corporations for mid-career talent?

Retail

How do we position ourselves and our talent in an omnichannel sales and delivery environment?

Transportation and Logistics

Where do we best position needed skills to meet demand, recognizing local market constraints?

About Us

We are a business dedicated to people analytics and planning consulting for HR professionals, focusing on core skill building and opportunities to embed evidence as a foundation for effective HR management. Whether your organization is just getting started or looking to accelerate progress, our goal is to enhance capability through knowledge transfer and advisory support based on over 75 years of cumulative HR consulting experience.

As a niche, women-owned business, we have an inclusive approach that can readily adapt to meet your needs—leveraging evidence-based methods to build bridges with the business and other corporate functions. No matter the service, our core principle is to follow a practical and effective approach, making sure our work has MERIT!

Our Leadership

Helen Friedman is Partner and CEO at Merit Analytics Group LLC, which she co-founded after over 30 years of working in HR consulting at Willis Towers Watson, Mercer and Hewitt. In this role, Helen is able to focus on helping organizations bring the power of data analytics to inform critical HR and business decisions. Her prior tenure included global leadership for talent analytics consulting and technology services, where she developed intellectual capital and led the largest and most complex client engagements, including implementing and tailoring technology solutions to meet unique client needs.

Helen’s work in the field of talent analytics spans all major industries and work areas, including workforce planning and optimization, dashboards and reporting, site selection and labor market analysis, and predictive/prescriptive analytics. Helen is a well-known thought leader, who has spoken regularly at national conferences and has published on a diverse array of topics in this field with credits in well-known media outlets ranging from The New York Times and Yahoo! Finance to CFO.com and the Journal of Organizational Excellence. She also has supported the enhancement of the human capital analytics and technology community as an adjunct faculty member at New York University.

She earned her B.A. in Mathematics at Haverford College and an MBA with highest honors at Columbia Business School in Finance and Management.

Anna Marley is Partner and COO at Merit Analytics Group LLC, which she co-founded after over 15 years working at Willis Towers Watson, Mercer and Analysis Group. Anna has diversified experience and specific thought leadership in workforce-related analytics based on her wide range of evidenced-based workforce management engagements—from examining labor dynamics and building workforce dashboards to developing predictive and prescriptive statistical models, such as proactive pay equity analysis. She differentiates her approach through her understanding of organizational business and HR strategy, which leads to more aligned, practical and effective solutions for clients.

Anna has worked with large-scale employers across several industries, which is a testament to her versatility and cross-industry knowledge. Over her years in consulting, she has had both direct consulting responsibilities and global management roles for service development, including leading efforts to build proprietary technology to support workforce analytics and planning.

She holds an MBA from the University of Notre Dame and a B.A. in Economics from Bates College, both Magna Cum Laude.

Brian Levine is Partner and Pay Equity Leader at Merit Analytics Group LLC. He has extensive experience in People Analytics, with a deep specialty in supporting DEI and pay equity efforts. Brian spent 23 years as a workforce scientist at Mercer, where, after launching the firm’s pay equity offering, he held various leadership roles for more than a decade, including leading the analytics business, and, most recently, driving the commercialization of pay equity for the global firm. Brian has been the principal pay equity consultant for more than 20 of the Fortune 100, has led hundreds of pay equity studies, most global in scope, and has significantly evolved related methodologies over his career to ensure companies can achieve real progress and document that progress in their public reporting. He regularly meets with Executive Leaders and Boards to review analysis results. His work crosses industries, though he has been heavily engaged in work for the financial services, technology, retail, consumer, and life science sectors.

Brian frequently publishes in the professional press and speaks at conferences. In 2021, Brian published his research assessing compensation philosophies within and across firms, from an examination of more than 50 pay equity studies, in The Journal of Total Rewards; he later presented that research at the WorldatWork Rewards ’22 conference in Atlanta. He has been quoted in many publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Brian has Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Economics and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations with honors, all from Cornell University. He has served on the adjunct faculty of both New York University and Baruch College.

Our Mission:

Our Experience:

Our MERIT: