HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE RESEARCH:
Finding: Only 36% of HR professionals are good or very good at talent analytics. When it comes to the overall ability to use talent analytics, there are three basic segments (note that numbers do not add to 100% due to rounding):
- those who say their ability is good/very good (37%)
- those who say it is moderate (28%)
- those who say it is poor/very poor (34%)
This data suggests that, although high performance in the area of talent analytics is possible, it is not yet common. Therefore, we believe that high performers should be taking advantage of their expertise in this area and others should be scrambling to get up to speed.
Finding: Compensation is the area most commonly cited as an important use of HR analytics.
There is no question that analytics can play a role in almost every part of HR. However, it is more crucial in some functional areas than others. The top three areas are:
- compensation
- recruitment and selection
- organizational development
Not only are these areas important, they are also ones where it is relatively easy to get good internal data on which to base an analysis. For most organizations, these functional areas are a good place to start their HR analytics journey.
Finding: Data collection, clean-up, and integration represent the biggest challenges. About half of HR professionals say that data collection and clean up are fairly or very difficult, and the same is true with regard to integration. These are important findings because people who are not directly involved in analytics often fail to appreciate these two areas, instead focusing on issues such as data analysis. Analytics experts, however, are well aware of how difficult it can be to integrate data from multiple sources so that it makes sense. When the integration doesn't go well, it often requires people to go in and "clean up" the data so it can be accurately analyzed. In contrast, it is viewed as relatively easy to actually distribute the data once analyzed.
To learn more about The 2019 State of Big Data and Talent Analytics survey and to get strategic outcomes and 10 key takeaways from this exclusive HR.com Research Institute research, please read the complete report and infographic here:
