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HR as a Strategic Ally
Modern HR executives have worked hard to transform the perception of HR as a cost center to a strategic ally for business leaders. Talent is capital and must be managed as rigorously as any other asset. Making important personnel decisions based on hard data is at the heart of fact-based HR, and a recent McKinsey & Company study1supportsthe value of hard data for HR by finding that companies scoring in the top third in talent management were 40 percent more profitable per employee than those in the bottom third. Google, Bon-Ton, and other enterprises have also proven the value of better analysis of HR data. However, HR executives have been hobbled by old fashioned information systems. To hard questions, they have only soft answers. What’s the ROI of training? What candidate screening yields best results? How do we spot and retain valuable players? Other questions, often spur of the moment, may flow one after the other as questions lead to more questions. The move to transform HR requires a better way for HR to access and analyze data. A modern analytic environment must offer three critical capabilities to the entire spectrum of HR staff so they can adequately support the enterprise.
Explore key metrics freely HR touches all departments across the enterprise so the data behind HR’s key metrics must bridge all information silos. For example, data may need to be viewed by business unit, product group, and geography to find root causes, to find profit per employee, to compare compensation with performance, or any number of other questions that arise as others are answered. The data may come from a myriad of sources; to truly become a strategic ally for the business, HR professionals require real-time, role-based access to all types of data. Executives at Shell Canada, for example, used dimension-free data exploration to find answers on employee productivity and qualifications, which helped determine the appropriate size for the workforce. Also, a top pharmaceutical company determined how work experience and education should affect starting pay grades.