Building credible human capital analytics for organizational competitive advantage

Despite the enormous interest in human capital analytics (HCA), organizations have struggled to move from operational reporting to true HCA. This is mainly the result of the inability of analytics teams to establish credible internal HCA and demonstrate its value. In the forthcoming article (to be published in Human Resource Management (Willey) in 2017), I stress the importance of conceptualizing HCA as an organizational capability and suggest a method for its operationalization.

I define HCA as an organizational capability that is rooted in three micro-level categories (individuals, processes, and structure) and comprises three dimensions (data quality, analytical competencies, and strategic ability to act). That is, I argue that the development of HCA within an organization requires working with three dimensions of HCA - data quality, analytical competencies, and strategic ability to act -  on three levels - individual, process, and structure.

To illustrate our arguments, I use insights from the various collaborative projects that Human Capital Analytics Group has undertaken with numerous companies in northern Europe. In the paper, you find many illustrative quotes and examples from analytics projects that we followed in six European multinationals (Shell, Novo Nordisk, Vestas, M?rsk Drilling, LEGO, and Nykredit). We also reflect on HCA projects in other companies in which HCA Group has been involved, focus groups we participated in and interviews with leading professionals in this field that we carried out during the last three years. In the paper I use this anecdotal evidence and examples of “what worked” to illustrate the challenges organizations face in developing HCA. In a sense, to my academic friends, this paper can be perceived as a phenomenological study with the goal of developing an “essence” description. The aim is to describe the experience of an organizational actor (i.e., an HCA professional) looking to build and develop credible HCA within his or her organization.

Overall, this paper provides insights into what organizations can do in-house to succeed in the development of a credible HCA and, in turn, create a competitive advantage. The accepted version of the paper is available via our website

Happy reading!