Turbocharge Your Digital Exhaust! Turning Data into Meaningful Insight
5 major takeaways about big data in HR from SHL’s Client Advisory Board (CAB) meeting
The SHL’s Client Advisory Board (CAB) is a group of senior HR, talent and assessment professionals coming together throughout the year to explore shared challenges and the impact of emerging industry innovations on our people and organizations.
At our recent meeting, we were thrilled to be joined by Dr. Nigel Guenole, Director of Research for the Institute of Management at Goldsmiths and co-author of highly successful ‘The Power of People: Learn How Successful Organizations Use Workforce Analytics To Improve Business Performance’. Dr. Guenole set-up the session by providing the group with the latest research on the current landscape of analytics in the industry of HR Technology, which sparked discussion in our meeting about:
- The explosion of big data for assessment and analytic providers
- The emergence and colliding of data scientists, machine learning, advanced technology, and psychology
- The opportunity and risk this can bring to organizations
5 Major Takeaways about Big Data in HR
Our group covered a lot of ground and our main takeaways were:
- HR is no longer ‘controlling the gate’ for assessment and people analytics. The business is bringing new solutions every day. In an unregulated industry, we need to be better equipped to evaluate new techniques against established assessment standards
- It is as important to focus on inputs AND outputs (rubbish in, rubbish out!)
- Talent and learning systems are the engine for big data – we must move from point solutions to truly integrated systems to maximize the value of talent data across the employee lifecycle
- ‘Data novelty is inversely related to data utility’ – if a claim about data or a tool sounds fishy, it probably is! Ask questions to challenge utility and hold up the well-established criteria within assessment (e.g. fairness, validity, reliability) to evaluate claims
- Seek to understand and validate differences in data and not just to make the model work – it’s human nature to be unpredictable and a scientific approach to prediction must continue to seek to understand difference at its core
It’s clear that innovation, opportunity and business appetite to advance people science is at a real peak. Data is in many ways our digital exhaust. But those making decisions about new tools, approaches and analytic platforms desperately need models and methods for fairly and objectively evaluating their potential impact and guidance on how to optimize their deployment.
HR is no longer ‘controlling the gate’ for assessment and people analytics.
At SHL we’re embarking on a journey towards people insight. Exploring how organizations can build rigorous and robust data sets to drive fair, objective, meaningful and real-time insight to inform talent decisions.
We can’t afford to compromise – especially when the decisions being made impact individuals’ everyday lives.
Learn more about how SHL’s people insight solutions can turbocharge your digital transformation!
