New report provides practical guidance to create and run an effective human capital analytics practice
Despite the plethora of data gathered over the past two decades, human resources functions have made little progress in using it to provide insights critical for strategic decisions. According to a new report from The Conference Board, Human Capital Analytics: A Primer, it is essential for HR departments not only to embrace analytics, but to move it from analysis to prediction and thereby prescribe solutions that align with enterprise-wide goals.
The report examines the current state of human capital analytics, identifies best practices that can lead to rapid development and deployment of a sound human capital analytics function and creates a framework to better understand the process of human capital analytics that will increase the likelihood of success.
“Today’s human capital functions have failed to keep pace with other business leaders in using analytics to make critical decisions,” said Rebecca Ray, Senior Vice President, Human Capital, The Conference Board. She continued, “Human Capital Analytics provides guidance and recommendations, and key actions corporations can take to outline a strategy to create a sustainable human capital analytics program.”
The goal of a proper analytics practice is to ensure that data is being tied to strategies that matter most to the organisation and that human capital efforts are aligned with the corporate goals and strategies. As such, the report notes several strategies to achieve this goal, including:
- identify the key business issues, problems or opportunities facing the organisation;
- build hypotheses surrounding the causes and probable impacts of an issue or opportunity;
- consider methodologies, consistency, information management, project management, technology, and data governance; and
- strive for high quality, alignment, transparency, credibility, and stakeholder input and executive buy-in as you implement your approach.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
