HR analytics applications

Video

Job design

Recruitment

In the world of motorsport, Nissan is also recruiting through an unusual channel: racing video games! Nissan joined forces with Sony to create the GT Academy, a global annual contest designed to find the best gaming racers and turn them into real-life racing drivers. Hundreds of thousands of hopefuls now enter the contest each year. And all of the winners selected in the past few years are still racing, proving what a useful recruitment channel this has been for Nissan.

Staffing

Training

With the rise of online learning, corporate learning and development is becoming increasingly personalised to individual learners. Fuelled by data and analytics, ‘adaptive’ learning technology allows courses, course segments, activities and test questions to be personalised to suit the learner’s preference, pace of learning, and best way of learning.

Individual, self-paced online learning is also arguably more cost effective than pulling employees out of their job for a day or week to send them on expensive training courses. Importantly, self-directed learning like this helps integrate ongoing development into employees’ everyday routines. Danone’s online Danone Campus 2.0 is one example of this in action. The food giant has created a user-friendly online platform where employees can boost their development and share best practice and knowledge with other staff.

Compensation

Performance management

UPS has taken the use of data and analytics in performance management to an entirely new level. For example, the handheld computer that drivers have been carrying for years (those electronic boxes you sign to say you received your parcel) is actually a sophisticated device that helps drivers make better decisions, such as which order to deliver parcels in for the most efficient route. In addition, UPS trucks are fitted with more than 200 sensors that gather data on everything from whether the driver is wearing a seatbelt to how many times the driver has to reverse or make a U-turn.

By monitoring their drivers and providing feedback and training where needed, UPS has achieved a reduction of 8.5 million gallons of fuel and 85 million miles per year. Plus, drivers now make an average of 120 stops a day. That number used to be less than 100 – meaning the same drivers with the same trucks are now able to deliver more packages than before.

You’d think that monitoring employees so closely might cause a backlash among staff. But enhanced performance means the company can pay its drivers some of the highest wages in the industry, which no doubt helps support employee buy-in for data-driven performance. The company has also taken other steps to ensure they don’t face a driver backlash; for example, under the terms of drivers’ contracts, UPS cannot collect data without informing drivers of what they’re gathering. Nor can they discipline a driver based only on what the data has told them.

Health and safety

In another example, Australian company Seeing Machines has developed technology for mining trucks that tracks the driver’s eyes in order to spot driver fatigue. The system uses a camera, GPS and accelerometer to track eye and eyelid movement, such as how often a driver blinks, how long those blinks last, and how slowly the eyelids are moving – and it can do all this even if the driver is wearing sunglasses. When a driver closes their eyes for longer than 1.6 seconds, an alarm is triggered inside the truck – both a noise and a vibration within the seat. Then, if the alarm is triggered for a second time, a dispatcher or supervisor is alerted, so that they can make contact with the driver via radio.

Steel producer North Star BlueScope Steel has been working with IBM to design a safety program that incorporates IBM Watson’s cognitive computing power and sensors in wrist bands and helmets. The program, called IBM Employee Wellness and Safety Solution, delivers safety alerts in real time to workers and supervisors. For example, if the technology detects a worker is not moving and they have an increased heart rate and high temperature, it could mean they’re suffering from exertion or even extreme heat stress – in which case, a supervisor could be alerted, or the employee advised to take a break.

1. Employee Churn: Huge investments are involved when it comes to human resources and this holds true for any business or organization. Employee churn analytics is the process of assessing your workforce turnover rate. Employee churn analytics helps predicts the future and reduces employee churn. Historical employee churn is the data collected from the past and specifies the employee churn rate since the start of employment. Predictive and historical churn data both are important for employee churn analytics.

2. Capability: Undoubtedly, the success of any business to an extent depends on the level of expertise of the employees and their skills. Capability analytics refers to the talent management process that helps you identify the core competencies of your workforce.

Once you know what those capabilities are, you can set them as a benchmark and compare them to the capabilities of your workforce and measure any gaps.

3. Organizational Culture: Culture is not only notorious to pinpoint but also, tough to change. It is often the collective unspoken rules, systems, and patterns of human behavior that make up for the culture of your organization or business.

Organizational culture analytics is a process of assessing and understanding better the culture at your workplace. When you know what is the culture of your organization, you can then evaluate and keep a track of the changes you might observe. Tracking culture changes helps to understand the early signs if the culture is getting toxic.

4. Capacity: It’s true, capacity affects revenue. The aim of capacity analytics is to establish how operationally efficient is your workforce. For example, in an organization that specializes in designing clothes, people are spending too many times on meetings and discussions than spending that time in more profitable work, or are individuals way too casual about their tasks? This behavioral analysis is capacity analytics that determines how much capacity they as individuals have to grow.

5. Leadership: Poor leadership is as good as no leadership at all. Poor leadership costs money, time and employee churn. Employee retention for such an organization becomes extremely difficult and prevents a business to perform at its full potential. Leadership analytics analyzes and unpacks various aspects of leadership performance at a workplace to uncover the good, bad and the ugly! Data can be collected through qualitative research and quantitative research by using a mix of both methods like surveys, polls, focus groups or ethnographic research.