the new hr

Organisations are
the rate of employee turnover
and benchmarking it against the
moving from just
industry will describe and give
descriptive reporting
insights into some important
to more predictive and employee behaviours. The primary
prescriptive analytics.
aim has been to either reduce HR
costs or improve people processes.
Therefore, descriptive analytics
tells us more about what has been happening in the
past and what is happening now. At some level, all
firms have been engaging in descriptive analytics—
people analytics at this level is not a completely
unknown territory. Does it then mean that it is
merely old wine in a new bottle?
Predictive analytics uses current and historical
facts to make future predictions by using statistical
techniques of probability. Examples of this include
finding out the probability that an employee will
remain with the organisation for a period of 3-5
years, thereby increasing the probability of selecting
the right people during the hiring process. Some IT
companies predict the future performance of new
engineering graduates based on their performance
during the training period. In short, predictive
analytics tells us why things are happening and
where things are likely to lead in the future.
Prescriptive analytics is far more sophisticated
and goes beyond prediction. It analyses complex
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sets of data and provides managers with various
decision options along with the business impact
for each alternative. For example, how different
types of training programmes and learning
methodologies will impact business outcomes.
Based on this, the manager can make a more
informed choice of selecting the appropriate
learning programmes for the employees—would
a classroom training on leadership be more
effective and useful than an e-learning module?
Is it more profitable for the organisation in the
long run to hire academically brilliant candidates
from a tier-1 engineering college who will stay
for 2 years, or students from a tier-2 engineering
college who will stay for 5+ years? Prescriptive
model shows the impact of decisions on business
outcomes such as ROI, profitability, top line, and
bottom line. This enables managers to analyse
scenarios, see the business impact, and then take an
appropriate decision.
Today, organisations are moving from just
descriptive reporting to more predictive and
prescriptive people analytics.
A strategic business partner
Traditionally, the HR department has included
processes spanning the entire employee lifecycle,
from hiring to compensation, performance
management, learning and development,
retirements, layoffs, and labour relations. It has also
managed intangibles such as employee engagement,
organisational culture, and change management.
Time and again, debates have been raised on the
contribution and existence of the HR department.
Prof. Ram Charan, in his 2014 article It’s Time to
Split HR, spoke about the need to say goodbye to
the HR department and spilt it into HR-admin for
compensation and benefits, and HR-LO (leadership
and organisation) to focus on talent improvement
and development. He proposed that HR-admin
should report to the CFO while HR-LO, which is
more strategic, should directly report to the CEO. 1
Many well known global organisations like Bayer
AG, Monsanto Company, Unilever, Accenture,
IBM, Hewlett Packard, GE, Schneider Electric,
16 INDIAN MANAGEMENT NOVEMBER 2015