People Analytics

Do you know how much data is produced every day?

How are these technologies related to human behaviour?

And how are these technologies related to HRM and broader organizational strategies and goals?

People Analytics (aka HR Analytics or Talent Analytics) is a recent development in the field of OB/HRM that combines cutting-edge algorithms from data science with advanced techniques from psychometrics to improve the prediction and explanation of organisational behaviours that can help make people and organisations more effective.

Until the beginning of the 2010’s, the HR departments used to deploy statistics and data mining techniques to look into the past so as to provide insights regarding different organisational behaviours, such as organisational climate, organisational culture, organisational commitment, among others. This type of practice is called Descriptive Analytics since it is typically focused on the description of events and phenomena that happened with a focus on data aggregation and simple communication of descriptive statistics.

With the collection of more complex data and an increasing potential for producing more thorough and homogeneous information connected with the organisation strategies, new challenges were posed for the HR departments, which started to be demanded to make more accurate decisions about their employees. As such, in order to add value to their current practices of Descriptive Analytics, two new practices started to be fostered: Predictive Analytics, which uses statistical models and machine learning algorithms to predict future behaviours, and Prescriptive Analytics, which taps into the results of the Predictive Analytics to advise on possible outcomes and make evidence-based recommendations.

These three analytics practices, alongside modern psychometric techniques and theoretical advances in the fields of OB/HRM can help organisations make more informed and more strategic decisions.

As part of the methodological innovations in the field of OB/HRM, People Analytics has a broad potential for application in scientific research. So, what are you waiting for?