The Scary World of HR Analytics: Made simple!

As it's Halloween this week I thought I'd look at something else that can also prove scary to HR professionals: The dark arts of HR Analytics!

Many predict this as the next big HR trend: anticipating the future and effectively deal with it now. I read a study recently, however, that suggested 47% of people in HR roles do not have the acumen or skills required to kick-off and navigate through an analysis of data to the extent that it then provides amazing insights that can help predict what could happen. This is a pretty big percentage but it's no surprise - much of the work around data involves a knowledge and experience with statistics, mathematical modelling and the like. Very few people outside of Finance/IT would have these skills and very few probably make the career transition from those 'departments' into HR. So we have a skills gap issue in the 'people' function!

We know that the future is about moving away from being pure HR experts to business experts who use analytics to drive actions. HR is comfortable with historical data (sickness/absence, training days, HR process completion, performance ratings, recruiting costs etc), but this doesn't help when it comes to addressing future business issues (project profitability, growth plans, building new skills in emerging markets or technologies, unmanaged high performer or role attrition etc). Things can be made even harder when it's difficult to know who should be collating data and where it's coming from.

So here's a few first steps:

• Have a go and just start somewhere – identify a current business problem and use some basic analytics to explore it and some insights will present themselves.
• Start with: What is the problem we are trying to fix, what are the two or three killer things we need to know to start to fix it?
• Use one or two statistical methods, some standard deviation thrown in, some charts and graphs to start to get under the skin of what the info is telling you/the trends and correlations it is highlighting.
• Understand what is relevant to the audience: present data that is relevant to the business strategy and operational challenges in a way that makes the links obvious. Use storytelling to home in on what you are trying to convey. 

A case study I was reading focused on trying to understand the probability that a new employee would leave within the first six months. Some of the data collected and analysed included: Demographics, education, interview process, referring person, agency used, last job, reasons for leaving last job, hiring manager, new salary versus old salary. The business was subsequently able to pull out a couple of factors that seemed to correlate to those who may not make the six-month point!

You won't be a perfect statistician and nothing is an exact science anyway but you may be surprised at what jumps out and grabs you from the murky depths of all that data! Feel the fear and do it anyway..........

Calling all mid to senior HR professionals - two freebies coming up:
Dec 9th Webinar: Recruitment Interviewing 3.0 For The Truth!

Nov 26th Central London Event: 'Ditch Traditional Appraisal! : Managing Performance for 'Overnight Results'.

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