Human Resources Joins the Analytics Revolution, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Report Finds

Executives are embracing workforce analytics as an essential strategy to directly impact financial results, according to Visier-sponsored report

A growing number of corporate boards, CEOs, and CHROs are looking to apply data-driven solutions to improve decisions about talent, and drive revenues and profit, according to a recent report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS) sponsored by Visier, the innovation leader in workforce analytics and planning. The report, HR Joins the Analytics Revolution, finds that corporate leaders are embracing workforce analytics as an essential strategy that can directly impact financial results. However, HR has a ways to go: only 24 percent surveyed by HBR-AS currently analyze their workforce -- the remaining 76 percent use data either rarely, on a reactive basis, or for operational reporting.

“At a time when talent has never been more critical to business performance, it’s no wonder that executives and leaders are craving the ability to identify future talent gaps and other pending workforce trends,” says Alex Clemente, managing director of HBR Analytic Services. “But according to industry analysts, it can take up to 10 years to get this level of analytics maturity using traditional methods. Businesses need to find innovative solutions to get the insights they need in a timely fashion, or risk losing out to the competition.” In its most recent annual survey of U.S. CEOs, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found more than 80 percent of respondents said that they needed talent-related insights to make business decisions. Nearly half (48%) of the HBR Analytic Services survey respondents said they expect to have predictive analytics based on HR data and data from other sources within or outside the organization in use within two years.   While many business leaders aspire to move up the analytics maturity curve, the report reveals that the top three barriers to achieving better use of data, metrics, and predictive analysis are:

• inaccurate, inconsistent, or hard-to-access data requiring too much manual manipulation

• lack of analytic acumen or skills among HR professionals

• lack of adequate investment in necessary HR/talent analytical systems

“It’s clear that bad data, lack of analytic skills, long implementation times and high costs have been getting in the way of HR adopting workforce analytics. At Visier, we have directly addressed these challenges by reinventing how analytics is done. By delivering a pre-built workforce analytics and planning solution in the cloud based on industry best practices -- and by designing it for virtually instant self-service use by HR and business leaders -- we are proud to be fueling the HR analytics revolution ,” says John Schwarz, Co-Founder and CEO of Visier. An Applied Big Data solution, Visier implements its cloud solutions in four to eight weeks, bringing together all of its customer’s workforce data -- from unlimited sources -- to predict how workforce behaviors (such as future employee recruitment, promotion, and turnover patterns) will change. With this insight, customers are able to create, analyze, and collaborate on plans to optimize their workforce. For more information, visit https://www.visier.com. Follow Visier on Twitter @Visier Follow Visier on Facebook

About Visier

Visier’s purpose is to help people see the truth and create a better future—now. Visier was founded to focus on what matters to business people: answering the right questions, even the ones a person might not know to ask. Questions that shape business strategy, provide the impetus for taking action, and drive better business results. Visier delivers fast, clear people insight by using all the available people data—regardless of source. With best-practice expertise built-in, decision-makers can confidently take action. Thanks to our amazing customers, Visier is the market leader in Workforce Analytics with 5,000 customers in 75 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://www.visier.com.