Beyond HRIS: exploiting HR Data is no longer an option!
Data connected with Human Resources is still an underexploited treasure trove, despite the technological and digital means available. These days, companies hold large volumes of unused data that could well become significant performance drivers.
Greater attention paid to such data has led to a change in Human Resources management over recent years, enabling a transition from the purely operational to more analytic strategies – in short, a switch from passive data to active data (their activeness being defined by the fact that they are used). In many companies, however, the Human Resource culture is yet to reach the degree of maturity required for optimal use of HR data.
A change in culture and mindset is essential in order to establish the necessary bridgeways between a company’s various departments and, ultimately, set up structures and systems that ensure data exploitation has the impact it is capable of.
The approach to HR data needs to be rethought from top to bottom, and the Human Resources Department must therefore also assume the role of “business partner”, drawing on all the company’s strata in order to carry out such a project successfully.
So how do you take the plunge and set about making HR data a driver of efficiency and performance?
How do you get to develop a corporate culture that makes HR data a central concern?
Towards a “business” approach to HR data
In whatever company, data are managed on a daily basis and are available. The challenge is to make them visible, readable and intelligible so as to be able to turn them into a HR strategy and concrete actions. In order to transition from purely operational data management to a more strategic way of doing things, it’s first of all crucial to put an end to silo management of such data and develop aholistic vision of them that integrates all the company’s departments – from operational to workforce management by way of finance and IT.
HR data collection and (good) management then becomes of key importance as a creator of value, as it ensures greater efficacy in such areas as recruitment, team management, staff retention, training and performance management.
The bedrock of this modus operandi is the Human Resource Information System (HRIS), an HR software base that must be seen as a “Business Intelligence” tool rather than a purely HR concern. Every brick in the HR technological wall must work towards this goal. It will then be a matter of collecting data and making it available to all stakeholders via a centralised tool (in dashboard form, for example), a process that should lead to adoption of predictive behaviour across the whole company. However, ensuring fluid processes drawing on this base requires optimal collaboration built on in-house change management.
Engaging and assisting employees during the change
As with any project involving a systemic change in a company, transforming your Human Resource Information System necessarily leads to major modifications of employees’ practices and habits, all the more so when it concerns all the company’s departments.
Such an ecosystem’s smooth operation is first of all based on close collaboration between Human Resources and the IT Department (CIO) in order to ensure setup of the most relevant and suitable toolsin compliance with security and confidentiality regulations.
Large-scale change management is required in order to ensure the fluidity of such a collaboration, as departments will have to collaborate very closely, and data must be added on a daily bass – it’s essential that information be communicated as soon as it’s obtained, in order to serve a form of management based on agility and anticipation.
Tools and data are shared with all HR functions, which will make them essential components of their recruitment and training strategies. The operational side will draw on these indicators and be able to implement ad hoc action plans in line with the HR policy defined. Hence, the data involved provisions an entire virtuous ecosystem, whose operational and commercial effectiveness is based on the availability of reliable, secure information in near real time.
Added value for training and recruitment
All available data have potential. Their content and volume enable obtainment of measurable and, above all, comparable information: actions regarding presenteeism and absenteeism, for example, can not only be measured but also analysed in accordance with a range of parameters. This type of agile comparative analysis is an asset to aim for in order to roll out suitable HR strategies at grassroots level.
Data will never replace human assistance. However, it can reveal blockages and needs that can be acted on relatively quickly, such as recurring performance problems or malfunctions, and, conversely, efficiencies to be exploited. Consequently, managers are better able to anticipate and assist with needs, and identify complex situations. Data therefore enables clearer understanding and more effective assistance, as well as implementation of tools that have a perceptible impact on employees’ daily lives.
By using data, HR managers can also identify the positions in which staff turnover is higher than elsewhere, which human management doesn’t always reveal. On the basis of experience, data can also operate on a probability principle and anticipate reasons for departure.
Such predictive analysis is of vital importance to recruitment strategies, as it enables managers to go beyond intuition and focus on prediction and action.
Towards data management maturity
In a context where recruitment, training and retention of talents have become major concerns, the potential provided by HR data must be central to business strategies. In this respect, tools and teams must communicate and collaborate in order to obtain and analyse clear, interpretable, intelligent information enabling optimisation of journeys and results.
HR tools must go beyond their purely administrative status and become “Business Intelligence” devices. Such evolution towards maturity of data management and an HRIS culture is therefore no longer an option.
