Picture: KamiPhuc, Flickr.
Businesses and large corporations struggle to digest dense data. An overload of data can be intimidating, and problems arise from the time taken to process the information, as well as a lack of internal skills and tools to interpret it. In cases where there is no effective way of dealing with this data, valuable information can clog the network, and insights into your business performance can go undiscovered.
Despite more than 50 per cent of organisations adopting big data solutions, about 40 per cent are not even considering it. This hesitancy in adopting big data solutions means that less Australian organisations are taking advantage of advanced analytics. Yet, big data has the potential to reveal vital information about your company’s external interests - and more importantly, the internal struggles your business may be facing. For HR teams, people analytics solutions can be easily implemented to address and improve recruitment and talent management strategies.
Improving business performance
Insights derived from big data can be key to reaching business outcomes in the most effective way possible. Analytics tools offer great potential, as more complex business outcomes and objectives require sophisticated data interpretation. People analytics can decipher this information, and provide solutions for critical areas of growth in your business’ most important resource of all - people.
Analytics tools are able to assist this process by identifying patterns in data, predicting insights and anticipating future needs, thus driving success and enabling an organisation to reach their business and HR goals.
Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is key to improving business performance, and can be optimised with data analytics. Workforce planning is understanding what the people requirements of an organisation are and how your most important asset, your staff, can best support the business today and in the future.
Executive dashboards can greatly assist your organisation by enhancing your ability to collect and analyse data. This will allow your organisation to recognise current trends and predict future workforce needs within your company. These insights can then direct sustainable business decisions for optimal results at minimal cost. It’s always better to proactively plan, than to make knee-jerk reactions.
For example, using an executive dashboard and investing in an innovative HR strategy can help identify talent shortfalls and speed up the process of identifying sources of new talent for your organisation. It can also help improve budgeting by gaining insights into your workforce accounts and spending across your entire organisation. Finally, it can enhance strategic planning, as you will have more information at your disposal than ever before.
Looking to the future: succession planning
The interpretation of big data that people analytics provides allows for more accurate planning within organisations, for issues facing the business now and in the future. Data analysis can draw invaluable intel and reveal areas that may need attention in the future, such as succession planning.
Particularly with an aging population, businesses must prepare for a smooth transition when changes in leadership occur. An effective business succession plan can provide security for the company, and generate increased owner, employee and customer-confidence.
By leveraging the knowledge people analytics derives from big data, more accurate organisational forecasts can be developed and used for future planning.
With big data, people analytics can expose human resource pain points, and provide solutions that drive sustainable success for businesses. By fully optimising people analytics as a strategic resource, HR teams can tame big data, and harness its power to inform their talent strategy.
Karen Evans is Managing Director, APAC, Acendre
