Caveats for HR Analytics
- maradenewills
- Apr 2, 2014
- 2 min read
Modern HR functions are awash in data. Every current HR system ensures you are drowning in it - but do you know what to do with it? This article recaps the excellent points made in a CIPD blog post. It echoes my approach to HR analytics.
Getting data is the easy part. It’s deciding what to do with it that’s more tricky. There’s a real struggle to turn data into something that’s useful for the business.
Many HR professionals haven’t been required to think analytically about metrics and can find the idea of trying to make sense of statistics daunting. Collaborating with more analytically minded colleagues may be part of the solution.
Other departments such as Marketing are doing data analysis really well to understand customers and performance on products - set up work shadowing or secondment schemes with other data-saavy departments.
The data being collected also has to be appropriate for the task at hand. Most HR departments will try to derive insights based on whatever they have in their HR system. They need to start thinking in a more expansive way about data. The solution is to work backwards from the problem that needs solving.
Even if the data does throw up a groundbreaking idea to make the workforce more productive, HR might still struggle to get other departments on board because a lot of findings made through analytics are counterintuitive. Quite often analytics will challenge decisions that were made intuitively by business leaders - bringing into question somebody’s judgment. Doing that in a way that doesn’t create resentment requires skill.
So what should HR professionals do to get better data? Share your processes with the rest of the business and open it up for discussion. Be more critical of yourself in the way you handle data and learn from each other.
This article from Thomson Reuters illustrates a number of ways companies are data creatively. An important caveat for HR analytics practitioners is included.
Big Data needs to be seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Without real purpose, a data project can rapidly become a white elephant. It needs to produce results that can yield new ways of doing business.
This article from HC Online highlights the dearth of companies doing HR analytics successfully and the abundance of demand for learning more about it.
There’s a big difference between companies who use big data properly and those who use it badly. The best way to use it properly is by discovering how data impacts your role as an HR professional, and how you can use existing and untapped data sources in your organisation to shape your people strategy.
Comments