Mobilising people to achieve an organisation’s goals is not as straightforward as mobilising any of its other resources because, well, you’re dealing with people. People have skills, experiences, capabilities, feelings, opinions, perceptions, attitudes and values that must be taken into consideration when crafting strategy. For example, when goals are set for sales targets, implicit in those goals are assumptions around whether the people responsible for reaching them are able and willing to do so. This is where human resource professionals come in. They know the talent pool better than any other person within the organisation, and should be able to influence the direction and implementation of strategic plans by offering their people expertise. One suite of tools that allows them to offer objective advice is HR Analytics.
HR Analytics involves “the systematic identification and quantification of the people drivers of business outcomes, with the purpose to make better decisions”[1].
Through HR Analytics, organisations can measure progress towards business objectives. HR practitioners achieve the following four outcomes:
- An understanding of the performance of the human capital of the organisation
- The ability to speak in an unambiguous language that is used and understood by all areas of the business, not just HR practitioners
- Prioritisation of investments and justified decisions
- The ability to influence the future of the organisation.
Getting started is not very difficult. Most organisations already collect a wide range of people-related information, including performance data, engagement scores, salary and benefits information, and so on. The key is to organise, analyse and communicate the insights from this information in a way that can influence strategic decision-making.
Antilles Economics and the Human Resource Management Association of Barbados (HRMAB) will be conducting training on HR Analytics during the month of April 2018. Participating companies not only learn about the main metrics used in HR Analytics and how to create and interpret them, but will apply their knowledge using their organisation’s own data. We expect, therefore, that participants will leave the training equipped with their own HR Analytics dashboard and the insights they need to implement their people-related strategies.
To learn more about the training, please contact HRMAB at (246) 228-5518.
[1] S. van der Heuvel and T. Bondarouk (2016) The Rise (and Fall) of HR Analytics
