HR analytics has been generating plenty of hype in the last decade, and there’s no sign of slowing down. Before targeting our investment effort, we should explore the following: what is possible now with HR analytics, where is the market going, and how to successfully land analytics within the wider organisation. In our second HR analytics workshop with CIPD, we tried to address these questions with practical examples.
Key insights from CIPD HR Analytics Conference and Workshop
Min Bhogaita explored ‘The Art of the Possible’ in HR analytics by showcasing the latest, gound-breaking tech in the market. Examples include SoulMachines avatar, the BuzzBox data collection from WeLoveSurveys, free text analytics from Workometry and gamified personality traits modelling from Arctic Shores.
The 9-step method below gives the overview of James Gardner’s presentation on landing HR analytics within the organisation by engaging stakeholder in an HR Analytics workshop.
Photo 1: Participants engaging in a workshop; analysing the organisation as a detailed system, with activities mapped on OrgVue cards to roles and people.
Participants responding to our survey on the day gave a quick overview of their organisation characteristics, their analytical challenges and their current applications. Despite only 25 responses, the results are interesting, showing the importance of analytics to government HR, the largest group responding:
Perhaps reflecting the presence of larger organisations, the average size of an HR team as a percentage of the organisation had fallen from 2.5% in 2016 to 1.84%. The distribution of respondents’ HR organisations as a % of total headcount is shown below:
HR as a percentage of the organisation varied by industry, which gave an interesting – though not significant – difference, given the small size of the sample:
The challenges people identified were dominated by data quality (up from 3rd in 2016 to 1st in 2018), getting meaningful insights (down from 1st in 2016 to 2nd in 2018) and building analytical capability within HR (up from 5th to 3rd).
And respondents’ current applications of HR Analytics were interesting, showing domination by Employee Engagement and Workforce Planning – double the level of any other application of Analytics.
For comparison, the 2016 results can be found here.
Attendees of the workshop will receive the full set of slides from the CIPD team. If you’re keen to join a follow-up session with us to share case studies and hear about others’ progress in HR analytics, please contact us.
Additional resources you might be interested in:
- HR analytics workshop slides to use with your own corporate branding (email us here)
- A sample chapter of ‘Data-driven organisational design – by Rupert Morrison’
- Strategic workforce analytics research report
Any questions following the event can be directed to: giles.slinger@orgvue.com