25 Insights from the 2018 Human Capital Analytics Conference

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25 Insights from the 2018 Human Capital Analytics Conference

November 15, 2018 | Article

“Today, HR has a seat at the table, and in order to maintain that business partnership, you need to have an analytics framework.”

—Andy Kaslow, CHRO, Cerberus

Companies are collecting more and more data about their employees. When used properly, human capital analytics can uncover veritable needles in the haystack: why women at a company in China were leaving in such large numbers that it became a burden on the company, for example. Such insights cannot only help companies fine tune their human resource policies; uncovering a smart solution can also help contribute to the firm’s bottom line. However, companies also need to be mindful of the pitfalls of analytics: implicit bias in data, difficulty in analyzing ambiguity, and survey fatigue among hard-pressed employees.

When 125 practitioners and experts met to talk about human capital analytics, we took notes. Here are highlights:

A major theme was the importance of relating human capital analytics to the overall business.

While HCA are often used for the benefit of human resources management, it is imperative that they be tied to greater business goals. Specifically, show how analytics can be used to benefit the business line’s profit and loss statement.

One company had 20,000 sales people in China. But there was 10% attrition in the sales force every year, meaning that 2,000 new sales people had to be hired and trained. By doing a thorough analysis of the HCA, it was possible to tie the sales reps to revenue and the attrition to lost revenue. By determining the factors that caused sales reps to stay on the job, they were able to provide detailed guidance to recruiters about what special qualities to look for in candidates to increase employee retention, not only saving HR costs of recruitment and training, but also impacting the bottom line by increasing