Hr Analytics

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analytics. The challenges that the HR function faces is that most organizations are equipped with sophisticated HRIS systems with metrics and dashboards that generate complicated reports. But, the amount of data mined can be overwhelming. Thus, what people in HR need to be prepared and trained for is to read and analyse relevant data to form a meaning, a story that can be translated to research that is meaningful for the key decision makers. To overcome this an HR Analytics team of an HR function must work towards building a multi-disciplinary team, combining employees with business knowledge and those with technical skills. The most effective approach is to build a highly diverse team – a combination of people with engineering and statistical backgrounds paired with organizational psychologists and talent experts who understand the people dimension, as well as members with skills in communication and visualization. This well rounded team can share facts that can help drive better decision making, allowing organizations to be more strategic, insightful and potentially more laser-focused on where an organization should be investing its time and resources.

Given the global recession and talent imbalances in the world, it makes sense for companies to invest in this area and to develop a workforce analytics approach that provides decision-makers with high quality data enabling faster synthesis of key insights. To achieve this an organization’s analytics must be:

1. Relevant and Valid – start by picking a specific problem or opinion and then mine data that is relevant to the issue that needs to be solved

2. Compelling – the goal is not to merely present raw facts and figures but to identify and draw connections with the data and translate them to form a meaningful story that is comprehensible to the decision-makers

3. Transformative – the insight gained must drive action by planning intervention programs to rectify the problem

In conclusion I would like to stress that to base decisions on data and analytics does not mean that HR robotically responds to information in purely mathematical terms. Instead the practice should be to reflect and respond with all the intricacy, nuance and judgement that we as humans are capable of. It is imperative that modern HR practitioners should be people who are rooted in science but since life isn’t an algorithm we should not attempt to turn it into one.

References:

• Harvard Business Review – Change your Company with better HR Analytics by Mike Collins

• Dupress.com – HR and People Analytics by Carl Bennet and Laurence Collins