Optimize Your Greatest Asset -- Your People: How to Apply Analytics to Big Data to Improve Your Human Capital Investments

Chapter 3The State of Human Capital Analytics

Late in 2014, Vestrics and the ROI Institute collaborated on our first survey of the state of human capital analytics. The survey was unique in that it included only those companies that had resources dedicated to human capital analytics (HCA). Most, if any, surveys we have seen do not focus on organizations that have dedicated analytics resources. Deloitte has found that 78 percent of large companies rate HR analytics as “urgent” or “important,” and 45 percent of them rated themselves “not ready” for the global analytics trend. Only 7 percent of large companies rated their current analytics capabilities as “strong.”¹ Another survey, conducted by Harvard Business Review, found that 9 percent of respondents are using predictive analytics to make decisions about their workforces.²

We consider those in the 7 to 9 percent to be early adopters in HCA. We know there is a broad disconnect among readiness, maturity, the desires of leadership, and reality. Historically this disconnect exists because few executives have asked for human capital valuation. Candis Fields-Johnson, hits the nail on the head:

I think that HR is so far behind the other disciplines in the adoption of analytics because many organizations either have not made the leap or they are in the process of making the leap to transform HR from an administrative support function to a strategic support function.

Fields-Johnson goes on to say that she's witnessed “a calling for ...