Big data is a term that has been circulating around the tech sphere quite often in recent years. Essentially, the amount of data organizations can mine for information is exponentially increasing every year and, thanks to modern software tools, it is possible to analyze this data and use it to enhance business performance. How exactly will big data drive change for Human Resource professionals?
There are challenges that arise when navigating this new world of big data. It requires the ability to search for, extract, and analyze relevant information from diverse data sets. Once the information has been analyzed, the challenges of navigating the data include storing the information for easy retrieval and sharing it, whilst ensuring privacy.
These challenges amount to one conclusion for HR professionals: investing in an effective HRIS is critical in our current business environment. Once a satisfactory system is put in place, the software can improve various elements of your business, such as lower expenses, productivity gains, and a higher competitive advantage.
Read on to discover six ways big data is expected to change HR and how effective HR software can improve your business:
Employee Retention
Predictive analytics can significantly aid in employee retention. Big data will allow us to move beyond simple headcount and be more predictive than reactionary, ensuring that we understand our workforce and are able to do all we can to retain them. Workers tend to gravitate towards and stay at organizations where they receive the greatest rewards, and HR software can help realistically optimize salary and benefits for current and future employees.
Talent Recruitment
With big data analytics and the right support system, companies are able to move beyond job description-based recruitment and map skill sets to company strategy, allowing for better hiring decisions to be made. For example, HRIS can sort through thousands of applications in a small fraction of the time humans can by filtering CVs with key words and skills necessary to the job.
Employee Productivity
Performance metrics have been one of the most widely adopted uses of big data for HR and are used to improve workplace conditions and facilitate optimal performance by teams. For example, Bank of America used HR software that studies movements and interactions among its employees and noticed the teams with the best bonds were also those that were most efficient. These kinds of insights are valuable to a company and result in optimal productivity of their employees.
Enhancing Your Company Story
There’s a valuable opportunity to use big data for richer, more impactful storytelling, which is a critical component of being a business partner, leader or change agent both internally and externally. Using HR software for this purpose can enhance transparency and improve the overall culture and brand of an organization.
Knowledge Management
Training is a vital part of any workforce and HR software can do wonders in making it a simpler, smoother process for the company. Being able to look at metrics and analytics in a company-wide spectrum aids in the management/improvement of employee training and development in a significant way. For example, talent analytics help organizations analyze the gaps in staff knowledge and develop the proper training programs for them.
Futurecasting
Through the use of software that uses big data to find a single source of truth, it is possible to model the various changes that an organization may experience, from global to political, and what the impact of talent hiring, retention and engagement could be. Predictive analytics offers the ability to take the past and make sense of it in terms of common factors and key relationships and use that information to make sound and insightful recommendations.
Big data analytics may offer HR departments the ability to make data-driven, objective and overall better decisions about their employees and the company as a whole. HRIS greatly helps in the search, storage, and analysis of this big data, but it is up to the company itself to carefully interpret the results using appropriate programs and project parameters. Now is the time to invest in HR solutions as expectations for HR professionals to be able to master big data increases and technology continues to evolve.
Source: aberdeen