Moneyball Moment in HR

HR has traditionally never been associated as a data driven department. We primarily associate it with softer side aspects of managing an organization, be it training, interviewing, employee engagement and talent management. However, this is changing with a more networked society, and transparency of information with employees. The market dynamics is demanding that organizations become agile, nimble and leaner to take on unexpected competitors. This is resulting in decision making moving to the business managers. Traditional tasks normally associated with HR are now business unit leader’s responsibility. This had a ripple effect and freeing up bandwidth in HR departments, and to allow them to shift focus from mundane to strategic interventions.

At the same time with a fast changing economic environment, the demand for data driven decisions has never been higher, especially in areas of nurturing talent, recruitment and training interventions. This has become easier given HR systems integration with rest of the organization. In a highly competitive market environment, it is becoming imperative for organizations to reduce costs and improve the return on investments. This is resulting in a fight for talent which can enable organization to meet and exceed these demanding business goals. There is immense pressure to acquire talent and retain high performing employees.

This is where data analytics in HR can become the differentiator and help organization gain a competitive edge. Using HR data analytics it became aha! moment for an organization, when it realized the best sales personnel were those who resumes were grammatically correct, and not those who went to the best schools, as one of the factors among others.

Talent requirement and availability is disbursed across geographies/countries with corporations going global and truly global operations. Therefore traditional route of sourcing talent might not work in this environment. Plus with a constant need to proactively source right candidates, there is movement away from request to hire and recruit to identify talent and create opportunities within the organization.