Technological innovation has given Human Resources the ability to predict the future — and has moved HR into the boardroom. But it’s up to data-savvy HR professionals to make that move permanent.
“Why should I, as a managing director or a CEO, give as much credibility to HR as I do to finance, operations, procurement, sales and marketing?” Personnel Today asked last week. “[Because] those functions are data led; they can provide me with numeric business cases, forecasts and scenarios; [and] I know where I stand with them.”
Like other departments, HR uses data analytics to closely examine what’s really happening within the organization. It is humanizing big data with “people analytics,” and last month Bank of America tasked its HR lead with the institution’s critical post-financial-crisis stress testing.
HR’s Seat at the Table
“This is an absolutely exciting time to be in human resources,” SAP’s David Swanson said Monday in Las Vegas, ahead of SuccessConnect 2015. “I’ve been in HR for the better part of 20 years, and I really feel that for the first time HR is front and center at the executive table.”
CEOs want to learn from past hiring successes and failures, a job that’s perfect for analytics-enabled HR departments, according to Swanson. The end goal is to use analytics for predicting the future, knowing whom to hire — and which new hires will most quickly become productive.
This story originally appeared on SAP Business Trends. Follow Derek on Twitter: @DKlobucher
