July 2014
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TD Magazine

Better, More Informed Decisions

Tuesday, July 8, 2014
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Better, More Informed Decisions

Many HR leaders and learning professionals are being asked to use human capital metrics to predict the future needs of their organizations. During the past year, T+D has published many articles about big data and how it applies to the learning and development field, but this month we are pushing big data into a whole new realm—human capital.

Stephanie Castellano writes in her feature article that experts like HR strategist John Sullivan "warn that organizations must learn how to interpret and act upon the data they are collecting—so instead of merely generating 'endless reports that no one reads,' they are identifying the most important metrics and turning them into powerful decision-making tools."

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According to Castellano's article, survey data from the Institute for Corporate Productivity reveals that while most organizations know the importance of predictive talent analytics, only 7 percent of organizations are systematically undertaking it. Are there too many metrics from which to choose? Or is there confusion about what to do with the data or what to measure?

"Although best-in-class organizations have dedicated analytics teams that mine data and design algorithms as part of their daily work, many HR and training functions struggle with basic data collection and interpretation," Castellano writes.

How much data is too much? When you are talking about human beings and performance, how do you strike a balance between using hard data to help people get into the right jobs and perform efficiently, and allowing human judgment to be part of decision making on whom we should hire and how we should manage them?

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Analytics are valuable because they can be used for benchmarking and predictive analytics, but they are only valuable when the right data is selected and then used correctly to predict an employee's success in the organization.

Paula Ketter
Editor, T+D
[email protected]

About the Author

Paula Ketter is ATD's content strategist. Previously, she served as editor of ATD's periodicals.

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