The start of a new year is often a time of reflection. In recent blogs for the Center for Applied Insights and HR.com, I’ve been looking back on the previous year and speculating what the next 12 months will hold. During these opening weeks of 2016, I find myself marveling at the continuing advances made in 2015 for handling vast amounts of data and applying sophisticated analytical techniques to unearth impactful people-related insights. Yet, recent research continues to show that only a small percentage of companies have embraced workforce analytics. The interest is there, but what about the will? Is 2016 the year we see a tipping point in workforce analytics adoption?
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I’ve had the good fortune recently of listening to a number of practitioners who have successfully embarked on the workforce analytics journey, and it has been incredibly inspiring. I’ve heard encouraging stories of how they’ve overcome data challenges and skepticism, how they persevered through the extraordinarily hard work of implementing actions informed by the analytics, and have proven the value of bringing an analytics mindset to HR.
In these conversations, my long-held view that people are critical to successful workforce analytics has been reinforced. We should never lose sight of the fact that people, not algorithms, need to make decisions about people. Not forgetting of course that those decisions will be much better with the assistance of analytics. Sometimes the analyses reveal surprises and debunk long-held views, and sometimes they confirm hunches we already hold. Either way, data brings confidence, superior decisions and better outcomes.
The examples of workforce analytics successes, both large and small, are quite encouraging. Is 2016 the year of workforce analytics? I do believe this may well be the one.
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