The New HR Analytics

CHAPTER TWO

Toward Analytics and Prediction

“The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.”

—ROBERTSON DAVIES, A Voice from the Attic, 1960

I introduced human resources metrics in 1978, with a series of public workshops based on my experience running a human resources department for a bank and later a computer company. Since then metrics have experienced a long, slow, and somewhat unsteady evolution. With every economic downturn we seem to retreat to the old familiar, if ineffective but comfortable, ways. As the market reopens, so do our minds and we try once again to make progress. In my view, human capital metrics passed through several evolutionary steps and continues to evolve. ...