By Andrew Marritt, a member of the CIPD’s HR Analytics Advisory Group and Founder of OrganizationView – a Swiss-based People Analytics practice.
There’s a belief, that I hear frequently in the HR analytics community, that HR Analytics means a move away from intuition. This isn’t true.
Analytics using your own data is just one tool needed to conduct empirical decision making. Doing analysis – however sophisticated – can only be part of what you need to make great decisions. ‘Numbers are just another voice at the table’ as the saying goes.
As Sam Hill mentioned in his post on this blog ‘People Analytics – It’s a mug’s game. Isn’t it?’:
‘The People Analyst will keep formal and informal channels of communication open with HR process owners, line managers, senior managers, HR Business Partners and potentially external stakeholders to measure the pulse of their organisation and to identify emerging workforce issues or opportunities.’
As HR professionals there is usually a good reason that we hold the beliefs that we do. Many of us have built up knowledge and experience over many years of seeing similar situations, reading case studies and books or speaking to peers.
Managers too have built valuable experience. Many tend to have a good knowledge about what is happening in their organisations. They will have seen similar situations or even studied organisation theory on a general business course.
Discounting this experience and knowledge would be like starting with your hands tied behind your back, but unfortunately it’s common with some HR analytics teams.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Please continue reading at the source below to give full credit to the author.