Power of Big Data & HR Analytics and it’s key benefits to the organization.

Power of HR Analytics & Big Data and it's benefits

HR analytics is a methodology of deciphering data for creating insights on how investments in human capital assets contribute to the success of four principal outcomes:

(a) generating revenue

(b) minimizing expenses

(c) mitigating risks

(d) executing strategic plans

This is done by applying statistical methods to integrated HR, talent management, financial, and operational data.

The two most recent and major fields of study and implementation for Human Resources have been, The Big Data, and HR Analytics. The power of HR Analytics and Big Data has made companies make more informed decisions. Companies so far had largely been dependent on “intuitions” based decision making as a trend. With the advent of HR analytics, the official decisions have become more promising and accurate across the board, worldwide. 

This is the most important reason for companies which are investing millions and billions into talent management software and hiring subject matter experts including data scientists, key statisticians, and data analysts.

Now let's spend some time to understand what HR analytics and Big Data really mean. When an organization maintains a record of all its prospective candidates and present & past employees, it means that the HR function has any time excess of that data, making it easier to manage people and processes and get a better return on investment on employees. Employee Hiring these days is also based on the inputs through HR Analytics.

As organizations are realizing that employees are the central bodies of their business, it is the HR department that takes care of every aspect of these bodies. In that way, the HR function becomes the central point for collecting and processing the data regarding employee information, hiring requirements, salaries, promotions, attrition, etc. But HR analytics does not just deal with gathering data on employee efficiency. Instead, it aims to provide insight into each process by analyzing data and then implementing it to take relevant steps to improve these processes.

There are various aspects of the workplace where HR analytics and Big Data can be useful:

1. Talent Acquisition
2. Training and Induction
3. Performance Review
4. Compensation
5. Rewards and Benefits
6. Retention
7. Employer Branding

This useful data could be all over the place and be worthless in the absence of a proper HR analytics tool. This is why a desirable HR analytics tool could use HR and big data analytics to interpret this useful data and transform it into useful statistics. Once observable patterns are depicted, HR can decide what to do with it based on the observations. Analytics are used to examine the effects of HR metrics on organizational performance. In general terms, analytics look for patterns in the metrics.

For example, using the HR Analytics, organizations can find out if the high potential employees are leaving more often and can use this data to ponder over ways of retaining and engaging these Hi-pots.

By using analytics, organizations and their management can become predictive over time. In other words, you can use the data you may already have to discover answers to questions like which of my top performers are at risk for leaving the organization in a few quarters, or distinguish which HR initiatives like job enrichment, onshore project or long term incentives will defer the decision of employees leaving your organization.

Here are 8 benefits of HR analytics:

1. Data-driven recruitment decisions

HR analytics helps HR and Line managers to make better choices based on historical data. A great HR analytics tool can make a difference by enabling HR to easily derive the best candidates to hire from the historical data.

For example,­ if you hired 10 candidates and 4 out of them belonging to a particular background couldn't qualify beyond a level, perhaps you will not hire someone from a similar background again. HR analytics prevents you from making such mistakes. Moreover, it also allows the recruiter to learn more about candidates through online databases, applications, social media profiles, job portals, records, etc.

2. Reduced Talent Scarcity

Data-driven recruiting strategies provide insight to build a larger pipeline. With the help of HR Analytics, it is easier to target potential candidates for a particular position arising in the company. It is easier to understand the type of talent required, the knowledge required along with other important aspects that might be missed in a regular talent acquisition process. When the required talent is scarce for a specific industry or a job role, HR Analytics helps in identifying a Plan B for the next best talent which can be groomed into the role.

3. Process Improvement

Once the company has enough data to provide to the experts to come up with accurate statistics and patterns, the company can then use it to make the hiring process fast and efficient. Hiring managers will know which positions in the company require what type of talent, people, background & experience, along with the type of people that will not be suitable. Then it becomes much more streamlined to target a specific talent pool and get the much faster conversion for the pipeline of candidates. Organizations are realizing they need to embrace a data-driven culture to compete with others and attract top talent.

4. Improved Process Training

Training is a necessary requirement for any organization. Gaps in the training process can increase the job errors leading to unwanted issues. In the present time, most enterprises have started investing in good HR analytics and utilizing the collected data and patterns to design their training programs. This method also helps the organization identify if employees are making full use of the opportunities and knowledge imparted to them during training programs.

5. Better Insights about performance

HR analytics also help the company look at the employee's professional life by tracking, sharing, and analyzing performance-related data. This is the reason why companies track and record the behavior of their employees with customers and co-workers regularly. This employee's performance data is also used by the hiring manager to identify great talents during Internal Job postings as well as for promotions. This data not only provides more insights about the employees but also shapes the strategies to boost employee morale, retention, and engagement.

6. Controlling Attrition

When it comes to retention, HR analytics is an important tool to identify the retention rate of employees. It tells the company about the major reasons why employees leave and why they stay. There could be a variety of reasons ranging from under-performance, compensation, lack of skills to anything else. HR analytics could also be helpful in finding the gap areas where employees are finding difficulty in meeting goals and targets. HR can use various methods like employee surveys, team assessments, exit as well as on-stay interviews to find out the reason for attrition and map out strategies to retain them.

7. Improved Employee Experience

Once your recruitment process becomes swift, it automatically gives a good impression to candidates you want to attract to your organization. HR Analytics methodology in turn helps in employer branding too. It makes the recruitment process faster and the candidates don't have to wait endlessly to know whether they are rejected or shortlisted. This gives them a better candidate experience and improves the brand image simultaneously which gives your enterprise an edge over your competitors.

8. More Productive Workforce

Since enterprises have a grip on the kind of people to hire for a job, it becomes easier to expect better performance and productivity from employees. With analytics, you get an understanding of the workforce and hence know what kind of environment, policies, and teams will make them work hard and give you results that you expect from them.

The Future of HR Analytics & Big Data

Many renowned as well as few lesser-known organizations have actively started using Big Data and HR analytics and have been reaping the benefits of the same. Cognizant, HCL, Deloitte, Google, to name a few have been consistently making use of HR Analytics as a daily practice.

We’re experiencing huge changes in the HR landscape. Data analysis has taken over as a necessary tool to move beyond intuitions and gut feeling, but it comes with its own challenges. Once consensus is gained by removing peoples' apprehensions to move beyond traditional ways, then human resource management solutions will need to be chosen wisely to ensure goals are met.

Prior to Machine Learning, organizations used to manage data in manual and semi-automated ways. It would gather, store, analyze and process data to produce statistics before the data became irrelevant and needed updating at regular intervals. Moreover, there was a huge wastage of useful data that could help enhance the organization’s performance if stored and assessed properly. No data was being used and reused for multiple reasons and solutions, until now.

With machine learning, we can understand patterns in Big Data and accelerate business through automation. Resume parsing, for example, fast-tracks the screening process by identifying the candidates with the apt skills and education with existing data. Artificial intelligence also helps eliminate human error while performing repetitive tasks. Other concepts allow matching skills and qualifications of job seekers to provide a list of recommended jobs and creating relevant personalized learning opportunities based on individual learning history, goals, and preferences.

While HR analytics and Big Data has been a game-changer for many years, these new possibilities promise a plethora of potential from data insights.

HR analytics offers some undoubted benefits. It allows HR teams to significantly streamline processes that reduce costs, reduce attrition, and consequently improve the bottom line.

With task automation, you are freed up to innovate and explore the human aspect of human resources without spending time on tracking mountains of data from multiple sources.

Overall, the use of HR analytics has been established as an HR technology trend, as it is posed to improve the employee experience that directly translates into improved business outcomes.

Challenges and opportunities for Organizational Behaviour

How to use Organizational Behavior concepts effectively?

Understanding organizational behavior has never been more important for managers. A quick look at a few of the dramatic changes now taking place in organizations.

For instance, the typical employee is getting older; more and more women and people of color are in the workplace; corporate downsizing and the heavy use of temporary workers are severing the bonds of loyalty that historically toed many employees to their employers; and global competition is requiring employees to become more flexible and to learn to cope with rapid changes. The war on terror has brought to the forefront the challenges of working with and managing people during uncertain times.

In short, there are a lot of challenges and opportunities today for managers to use OB concepts. In this article, we review some of the more critical issues confronting managers for which OB offers solutions or at least some meaningful insights toward solutions.

Responding to Globalization: Organizations are no longer constrained by national borders. Burger King is owned by a British, and McDonald’s sells hamburgers in Moscow. Exxon Mobil, a so called American company receives almost 75 percent of its revenues from sales outside the United States. New employees at Finland based Nokia are increasingly being recruited from India, China, and other developing countries with non-Finns now out numbering Finns at Nokia’s renowned research center in Helsinki. And all major automobile manufacturers now build cars outside their borders; for instance, Honda builds cars in Ohio; Ford in Brazil; Volkswagen in Mexico; and both Mercedes and BMW in South Africa. These examples illustrate that the world has become a global village. In the process, the manager’s job is changing.

Increased Foreign Assignments: If you’re a manager, you are increasingly likely to find yourself in a foreign assignment transferred to your employer’s operating division or subsidiary in another country. Once there, you’ll have to manage a workforce that is likely to be very different in needs, aspiration, and attitudes from those you were used to back home.

Working with people from Different Cultures: Even in your own country, you’re going to find yourself working with bosses, peers, and other employees who were born and raised in different cultures. What motivates you, may not motivate them. Or your style of communication may be straightforward and open, but they may find this approach uncomfortable and threatening. To work effectively with people from different cultures, you need to understand how their culture geography, and religion have shaped them, and how to adapt your management style to their differences.

Coping with Anti-capitalism Backlash: Capitalism’s focus on efficiency, growth, and profits may be generally accepted in the United States, Australia and Hong Kong, but these capitalistic values aren’t nearly as popular in places like France, the Middle East, and the Scandinavian countries. For instance, because Finland’s egalitarian values have created a “soak the rich” mentality among politicians, traffic fines are based on the offender’s income rather than the severity of the offence. So, when one of Finland’s richest men (he is heir to a sausage fortune), who was making close to $9 million a year, was ticketed for doing 80 kilometers per hour through a 40-kilometer zone in central Helsinki, the Finnish court hit him with a fine of $217,000.

Managers at global companies like McDonald’s Disney, and Coca-Cola have come to realize that economic values are not universally transferable. Management practices need to be modified to reflect the values of the different countries in which an organization operates.

Organizational Behaviour Concept, read here

Mitigate the effects of COVID-19 – Key actions for business

In the face of a global pandemics, only the well-prepared businesses will be able to protect their workers and their bottom lines.

Worried about your business during Covid-19?

No crisis is an isolated, neatly contained incident, and the COVID-19 outbreak is exceptional by any standards. It comes with extreme scope and levels of uncertainty. It’s a situation that is well beyond the experience of most business leaders.The last epidemic that approached anything near this scale was the SARS outbreak in 2003. SARS infected more than 8,000 people and lasted nine months. In much less time than that, COVID-19 has already infected more than ten times as many people, and is spreading really fast.

Estimating the virus’s effect on the global economy is hard. The SARS outbreak is believed to have cost about US$40 billion; the economist who made that calculation says COVID-19 could cost three or four times as much. The International Monetary Fund had downgraded its global growth estimates, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has suggested global growth could be cut in half as a result of the virus. We’ve already seen massive disruption to supply chains, and if the virus continues to spread, we could soon again see widespread closures of schools and workplaces, whether voluntary or enforced.

Business leaders see managing a crisis as an inevitable part of their role. According to PwC’s most recent Global Crisis Survey, nearly seven in 10 leaders (69 percent) have experienced at least one corporate crisis in the last five years in their companies, and the average number of crises experienced in these firms is greater than three. COVID-19 will test many business leaders to the limit.

The key to managing any crisis is preparation. Here are seven actions that you as a leader can take to ensure your organization is in the best shape possible to withstand what’s ahead.

Review workforce locations and travel. The first priority is to establish exactly where staff are and how many workers are in affected or vulnerable territories. Do any need to be repatriated? Or have they asked to work from home? Upcoming travel plans will need to be reviewed, rescheduled, or canceled.

Clear policies should be in place to address absence due to sickness or caring for relatives, the protocol for visitors to company sites, the procedure for reporting illness, and travel restrictions. You also should plan for policies in the event of lengthy school closures — what will the policy be for working parents? There’s also the issue of tax: If workers are forced to stay in foreign countries longer than expected and then become subject to taxation, what policies do you have in place to address this? Lastly, be prepared to continuously refresh and update these policies as circumstances evolve.

Business Continuity Plan. Every well-run business has a crisis or continuity plan, and many will have a specific pandemic plan. But nothing tests theory quite like reality. One Asia-based organization’s pandemic plan, for example, designated a European city as the evacuation site for employees and their families — but flights from China to the city were suspended soon after the outbreak.

Generic plans need to be adapted and tailored to cope with the specific challenges of an epidemic. If large numbers of your employees have to work remotely for a time, for example, is there enough technology bandwidth to cope? Will your operations be impacted if outsourced, offshore workforces are unable to come to work? What is the procedure for updating travel advice and policy? How will communication with employees be managed? During any crisis, the biggest worry for CEOs is gathering accurate information quickly. How will data flow during this crisis?

Effectiveness of your supply chain. A clear understanding of your supply chain will help to expose any potential vulnerabilities. This means beginning with the most critical products and looking well beyond first- and second-tier suppliers, right down to the raw materials, if possible. For example, if your products contain a component from a country that becomes isolated, is there a secondary supply? Contingency plans can run into difficulty quickly if the virus spreads; we’ve already seen suppliers in China that turned to South Korea as a Plan B, only to see that country quickly become infected.

Identify potential points of failure. Who are the teams and individuals on whom critical processes or services depend? Are there workers with the right skills who could step into critical roles if needed? Call centers and shared service centers are potentially vulnerable if the virus continues to spread — can steps be taken to reduce the level of human interaction, such as staggered shifts or remote working?

Communication. Although we’ve seen employers work hard to keep their workforce informed, disinformation and confusion have spread along with the virus. Your employees (and wider stakeholders) will be looking for reassurance from you that they are being protected and that the business is prepared. Leadership should be seen as a source of truth — and according to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, business is more trusted than both government and the media. Consistency and accuracy of messaging is the key, as is reassurance from the top of the organization; your workforce will need to know that their welfare is paramount.

Scenario analysis. With uncertainty rife, and COVID-19 holding the potential to impact every part of a business for months, scenario planning is a critical tool to test preparedness. What are the best- and worst-case scenarios, and is the business equipped to cope? What could be the impact in the longer term, for example, on working capital or bank covenants, or even rents for shops and restaurants if public places are closed? Ask searching questions of your finance team to highlight critical sensitivities. Organizations in some sectors could see a significant rise in demand if more of the population is spending more time at home rather than at work — are they prepared for this? Supermarkets are reducing the variety of products, stocking up on staples, and developing contingency plans.

Complimentary risks. COVID-19 isn’t the only threat on the horizon — and often organizations are at their most vulnerable when dealing with a crisis that dominates their attention. The many other risks that your business faces aren’t diminished by an epidemic. Cybersecurity, for example, should always be top of mind.

The response window for a crisis is measured in months, while recovery is measured in years. Those companies that are well-prepared will always recover more quickly.

Also read: Business Strategies from Turnaround specialists for Covid -19

Data Courtesy: PWC, Bloomberg

#dealwithcorona #businesscontinuityplan #businessstrategies

Business advice from turnaround specialists on Covid -19

Globally, businesses are down, demands have slumped, collections are pending, labour issues are prevalent, social distancing and sanitation is a new normal. We are learning to live with Corona slowly.

For businesses severely hit by the economic effects of COVID-19 globally, the steps they take today may result as the difference between survival and liquidation.

Below is the action plan as suggested by turnaround specialists using remote working techniques as appropriate.*

1. Prepare a conservative yet detailed weekly cash plan for the coming quarters. If possible, break it into daily plan for the next few weeks.

Be realistic so that you can use this to help ensure that your company does not run out of cash. Going forward, compare budget to actual each week.

2. Decrease cost and increase collections if not revenue - If the plan shows that you will run out of cash, then create an action plan to reduce costs and/or increase revenues and collections.

Important: Have a meeting with your most capable managers, review with them the cash plan and every line item on your financial statements and solicit their input and ideas about how to increase cash, increase revenues and decrease costs.

Prepare a written action plan based on the results and specify who is responsible for completing which actions by what date. Nailing down plans and responsibilities is critical.

3. Induce purchasing controls in the system, so that only expenditures specified in the cash plan are made. Define who has authority to approve the nature of expenditure and its outer limit, in what circumstances.

4. Eliminate non-vital expenses. Needless to explain, these are expenses which can be delayed.

5. Slow inventory? Try to get rid of idle lying inventory through discounted sales or bulk sales to stressed inventory buyers.

6. Stop producing money-losing products and providing money-losing services. If you are unsure which are money-losing products or services in your business, engage a professional who can quickly analyze the numbers.

7. Implement collection plans. If your business is not totally cash or credit-card-based, consider offering a discount for early payment. Offer to receive your outstanding in part payments.

8. Avoid selling to customers that do not pay. Do you have customers who are unable to pay the amounts they owe you? Are you unsure about their credit status?

Prepare a list of customers who have either defaulted or delayed payments in the past. Try not to sell your products or services to them on credit.

Insist them to pay cash in advance and design a fail-proof internal system to ensure that your company receives payment before providing its products or services. This benefits your customers, too, by ensuring that they can obtain needed materials and services.

9. Think of opportunities for additional revenue do you have in the current environment? Make use of the situation to offer a new product or service relevant for the society and businesses.

10. Take professional help available for your business and confer with your professional advisors (tax, law’s) to ensure you comply with current requirements.

#turnaroundbusiness, #postpandemic, #postcorona

Job Interview Tips - Make a Great Impression(3)

An interview is considered finished when you have the followup and the feedback.

What to do - before the interview  - Click here!

What to do - during the interview - Click here!

What to do - after the interview

When the interview is over, give yourself the best chances of moving forward by doing the following:

1. Ask about next steps.

After your interview, it is appropriate to ask either your interviewer, hiring manager or recruiter about what you should expect as next steps. This will likely be a follow-up email with results from your interview, additional requirements like an assignment, a Psychometric test or reference list or another 

interview.

2. Send a personalized thank you letter after the interview.

Ask for the business card of each person you speak with during the interview process so that you can follow up individually with a separate thank you email. If you interviewed in the morning, send your follow-up emails the same day. If you interviewed in the afternoon, the next morning is fine. Make certain that each email is distinct from the others, using the notes you took during the conversations.

Do practice the above steps to make it a habit. Read "Things not to do during the Interview"

Now read about what to do - before the interview - Job interview Tips

 Now read about what to do - during the interview - Job interview Tips