Harvard Business Review October: Post #4

Competing on Talent Analytics (Davenport, Harris, and Shapiro, pp. 53-58).

The authors track six “talent analytics” that separate the better companies from the pack. 1) Human-Capital Facts—what facts predict what outcomes? Jet Blue monitors employee engagement and promotion of the company to predict financial performance; 2) Analytical HR—collects data to predict or detect issues. For example, high turnover rates in a particular department will signal leadership issues; 3) Human-capital investment analysis—Sysco studied a number of metrics about their delivery associates (drivers) and found that highly satisfied employees produced more and stayed longer (duh!); 4) Workforce Forecasts—these analytics can predict turnover, assist with succession planning, and address other issues well before they happen. Dow uses this analytical approach to accurately forecast issues in the volatile world of the chemical industry; 5) Talent value model—answers the question, Why do employees choose to stay with our company? Google uses such analytics to identify its top and bottom 5% of performing employees. Then the company works with the bottom 5%—often finding that those people were misplaced or mismanaged in the organization; 6) Talent supply chain—these analytics help companies adapt their workforce to the changing business environment. Retailers, especially, can use these numbers to forecast upticks and downswings and thus adjust payroll to workflow.