6 Critical Analytics Concepts You must Know as an HR Professional

Today’s technology and workplace is filled with jargon – ones that could sound terrifying and complex to the average human mind. Concepts like Big Data and analytics have seeped into everyday HR processes. However, it’s only the terminologies that have become complex.  The job of HR associates, on the other hand, have not just become simpler but have become more effective as well. If you are an HR professional looking to make it big in your career, there are a few basic or crucial analytics concepts that you must know. We have compiled 12 such analytics concepts for your understanding. Check them out.

Analytics

Let’s start from the basics. Analytics is the process of analyzing a chunk of data for patterns, insights and crucial pieces of information that can give you newer perspectives of solving organizational concerns or pinpoint the probable onset of one. Looking at an employee’s work history to check his sustenance levels and commitment is one of the most practical examples of analytics HR professionals can employ. The same concept that gets implemented on deeper complexities refers to HR analytics.

Big Data

In simple layman terms, Big Data analytics refers to data analytics of massive databases – often several orders of magnitude bigger than traditional databases. In an HR context, your Big Data database could feature, key employee metrics, appraisal information, employees’ documents of background checks, copies of degree certificates, personal information, productivity index, attendance reports, payroll details and more. With such access to employee data, what you analyze them for can form a big part of HR analytics.

Descriptive Analytics

This is a concept in analytics, where you come up with details on what has happened in your organization or concerned departments over a period of time. For instance, making an attendance report of employees in a department for a particular quarter. This does not give insights on what impact it will have in the future or any corrective measures for the concern but simply reflect on findings from history data.

Predictive Analytics

Contrary to revealing what has occurred, the predictive analytics concept forecasts and predicts what can occur in the future. If you don’t stop with just creating an attendance report and actually work on how the attendance of your employees can hinder the delivery for a project that is coming up, you are implementing the predictive analytics concept for informed results.

Golden Path Analysis

You can call this is a derivative concept to predictive analytics, wherein you work on the behavioral data of your employees and come up with forecasts. For example, if the attendance of employees working with a particular manager is low and you can see patterns on frequent absenteeism and lack of commitment only with the employees under that particular manager, this behavior can direct you to the point of concern and come up with a solution before the advent of any serious outbursts.

Prescriptive Analytics

In this concept, you just don’t stop with forecasting what will happen. You will complement the analytics process by coming up with an effective solution for this. If you take the above example, prescriptive analytics will give you insights on whether you should confront the manager and sort concerns, have individual one-on-ones with the employees in the department to understand concerns better or have one with the manager to know the other side of the story. The remedy that you come up with for the patterns with the help of analytics is called prescriptive analysis.

So these are some of the crucial and foundational analytics concepts you should know as an HR professional. If you are looking to further grow in your career and leave an impact in your workplace, upskilling to HR analytics will be the perfect choice to make 2018 count. Start with the Full Stack HR Analytics course today.