It goes with saying that people are vital to the success of any company. There’s no doubt that any business which can attract the right competencies, manage talent effectively, utilize capacity efficiently, and retain employees is setting itself up for long-term success. HR departments are generating more data than ever before but at the same time they often struggle to turn their data into valuable insights.
Human resource analytics (HR analytics) is an area in the field of analytics that refers to applying analytic processes to the human resource department of an organization in the hope of improving employee performance and therefore getting a better return on investment. HR has core functions that can be enhanced by applying processes in analytics. These are acquisition, optimization, paying and developing the workforce of the organization. HR analytics can help to dig into problems and issues surrounding these requirements, and using analytical workflow, guide the managers to answer questions and gain insights from information at hand, then make relevant decisions and take appropriate actions.
The goal of human resources analytics is to “provide an organization with insights for effectively managing employees so that business goals can be reached quickly and efficiently.-
However, the challenge remains to actively identify what data should be captured and how to use the data to model and predict capabilities so that the organization gets an optimal return on investment on its human capital”.
Typical benefits and use cases of analytics in HR are as follows:
- Improve organizational performance through high quality talent related decisions
- Forecast workforce requirements and utilization for improved business performance.
- Optimization of talents through development and planning.
- Identify the primary reasons for attrition and identify high-value employees for leaving.
- Provide the source of competitive platform for the organizations
- Manages applicants in better way on basis of qualification for a specific position.
- From finding out crucial insights from the huge database of previous candidates, who attended interviews to finding out crucial linkages to note similarities and differences that could make a difference on the job, HR analytics plays a crucial role.
HR analytics is also immensely beneficial in training employees, which is a big part of HR departments. Instead of simply depending on hunch, HR analytics helps in ascertaining the exact training needs for employees, which eventually adds value to individuals and benefits the organisation.
IMPORTANCE OF HR ANALYTICS IN ORGANIZATION
People are organizations unsurpassed assets, and effective way of gaining competitive advantage in a present volatile market environment and it is a big challenge for organizations to manage employees with diversified competencies and mapping their outputs in line with the organizational strategy. This requires creating, analysing and storing vast amount of data to support decision making.
SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft are vendors in Business Intelligence. BI software’s have HR modules with BI and data analytics capabilities . R-Studio is a data analysis and visualization software tool which can be applied for very large data sets, Python is a preferred programming language of all data scientists for statistical data analysis and visualization. Microsoft Excel is a traditionally a great data analysis tool to collect, analyse and transform data using formulas, pivot tables, scenario building and graph tools. Microsoft Power Business Intelligence software has power to extract data from various sources and makes easy for us to analyse, aggregate and visualization of data.
The Future of HR Analytics
HR analytics is an evidence-based approach for improving individual and organizational performance by making better decisions on the people side of the business. HR analytics can certainly enhance the credibility of the HR function by improving the effectiveness of HR policies and practices and contributing to the competitive advantage of organizations that develop it as a core competency. As such, HR professionals develop new skills and capabilities so that they can effectively partner with and lead IT and finance on HR analytics initiatives, HR professionals will need to address ethical dilemmas.
Profile of Dr.Priyameet Kaur Keer
She has been working with New Horizon College of Engineering as Associate Professor . She has a vast experience as an Industry expert as well as an academician . She is currently into editorial board member for American Journal of Engineering & Management,Science Publication Group , USA. To her credit she has published 4 books,contributed in Newspaper ,Published in National and International Journal . She has been invited to Thailand as resource person for International Conference held in March 2018. She is into PhD expert panel for several universities. She is a blogger, author etc.
