HR data and Analytics

HR analytics, also referred to as people analytics, workforce analytics, or talent analytics, involves gathering together, analyzing, and reporting HR data. It enables your organization to measure the impact of a range of HR metrics on overall business performance and make decisions based on data. In other words, HR analytics is a data-driven approach toward Human Resources Management.

HR analytics is a fairly novel tool. This means it is still largely unexplored in scientific literature. The best-known scientific HR analytics definition is by Heuvel & Bondarouk. According to them, HR analytics is the systematic identification and quantification of the people drivers of business outcomes. We discuss this further in our People Analytics Certificate Program.

In the past century, Human Resource Management has changed dramatically. It has shifted from an operational discipline towards a more strategic one. The popularity of the term Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) exemplifies this. The data-driven approach that characterizes HR analytics is in line with this development.

Using data in HR
Of all the departments in an organization, the Human Resource (HR) department may have the least popular reputation.

This has two reasons. First of all, the HR department is like a doctor: you’d rather never need one.

Picture your role from the other side – when you ask an employee to come by your office, it’s likely that something bad is about to happen. You may need to reprimand, put on notice, or even fire your colleague. Good news, like getting a promotion, tends to come from an employee’s direct manager. Not HR.

Secondly, many regard HR as soft. Fluffy-duddy. Old-fashioned. A lot of the work in HR is based on ‘gut feeling’. We’re doing things a certain way because we’ve always done it that way. HR doesn’t have a reputation of bringing in the big bucks or playing a numbers game like sales. HR also struggles to quantify and measure its success, as marketing and finance do.