Human Capital Analytics: How to Harness the Potential of Your Organization's Greatest Asset

CHAPTER 1

Human Capital Analytics

“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine . . . . pursuing this strategically will create an unprecedented amount of information of enormous variety and complexity.”

—Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president, Gartner; quoted in the Register1

Human capital analytics can be approached in many different ways. Some organizations are very sophisticated at people measurements, while others are just beginning to think about starting the measurement journey. Investments in your people, your most important asset, can show financial returns to the organization, while also showing benefit to the employee through improved engagement and retention. Analytics on human capital investments is a very powerful way to improve those returns, on both the individual and the organizational level. This book focuses on predictive analytics, analytics that not only measures impact but also helps optimize and prescribe future investments. We hope that this book will improve your understanding of the power of optimizing your people investments. In the end, you will know not only how your HR investments are performing but how to improve them as they are deployed.

Predictive analytics is being successfully applied in the private, public, nonprofit, educational, and government arenas. Organizations that apply analytics to their human capital generally outperform their competitors. In a 2010 study of 179 large companies, those organizations ...