People Analytics
Overview
Among different applications of data analytics, people analytics is a growing method of analytics that collects and analyzes data about people to help organizations make better decisions regarding recruiting, developing and retaining employees. Historically, employment decisions are made based on qualitative evaluation of candidates with little use of data analytics. However, the increases in number of employees as well as applicants for numerous big corporations require a better decision-making method that can be quantitative and applied on a larger scale. Therefore, people analytics comes to existence and has been increasingly important. With better insights from people analytics, companies can develop a workforce that is happier and more productive. Moreover, retention rate will rise and hence firms will be able to do less recruiting activities. Big cost savings from recruiting can then be invested in other more useful parts of the business.
Relation to class materials
In practice, firms can use different tools and statistical analysis based on the same concepts in MIS 2502. Many recruiters and human resources departments use analytical data stores like MySQL database to collect and store data about their new hires or current employees. Tools such as R and Excel are used to conduct analyses and gain insights. Lastly, Tableau and Piktochart or similar data visualization software is widely used to prepare dashboards, presentations and findings to key stakeholders of employment decisions.
Example
Walmart’s Global People Analytics Team utilizes people analytics with Excel and Tableau to analyze and present their findings in an efficient manner. Specifically, Walmart collected data based on different categories such as demographics, branch information, performance, professional history, and tenure from many employees across different countries. Then, the Global People Analytics team exported portions of their data into Excel and pulled into Tableau for visualizations within a few days based on different audiences. For the global management team, they presented the aggregate data on an interactive map to show general differences among different countries. When they needed to present to a specific office, e.g. the American business, the visualization was broken down to illustrate the aforementioned dimensions across different states of the U.S.
In conclusion, people analytics is in its early stage of development. In the future, people analytics will be more widely implemented by different organization to bring about more insights for not only big but also smaller companies around the world.
References
Berson, Josh. “People Analytics Takes Off: Ten Things We’ve Learned” LinkedIn. 19 Oct. 2015. Web.
“Walmart: Faster decisions with people analytics.” Tableau. Web