The HR Analytics industry – the never ending story….

I have to confess that I have put this article off for quite some time now. My focus has been to write about Reward trends and themes, trying to offer up a different take on things. I have dodged writing about Analytics, and found excuse after excuse not to write this piece, but the time has come! The reason I have avoided it, is simply down to the fact that so much is written about HR Analytics, there are so many commentators, so many opinions, so many “latest trends”, endless articles that start off with “the problem with HR data…”, I just wanted to avoid jumping on the bandwagon. Though thinking about it further I realised that this industry saturation of info is exactly what I can write about to take a different angle on the never ending story that is “HR Analytics”.

The question that I started with, is why is there so much written about this space? Why is there a constant search for the perfect data solution, and why is there never a straightforward answer? I looked to see what leading commentators had written on this theme, and found absolutely nothing. So everyone has something to say about analytics but no one seems to have the answer to why there is so much noise about it?

It then hit me like a truck, it’s the lack of certainty across the whole HR analytics arena that has potentially driven its success. When there is no perfect answer and no proven solution you invite commentary and theories a plenty, and this is perhaps the driving force around HR Analytics. When you don’t have hard proof, when there isn’t a definitive market leader, and when you only have snapshots of success that often aren’t entirely relevant to your business, you open the flood gates to alternative ideas and possible solutions. Everyone has a “bespoke” product or “bolt-on” to a HRIS platform that is a complete “game changer”. Everyone talks about developing an upgrade for their respective HRIS that will “revolutionise” the industry. Everyone boasts about offering a pathway to predictive analytics, automated HR, and the list goes on and on!

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some great examples of impressive and useful HR Analytics products on the market, but if anyone had the true perfect solution everyone would surely buy it, rather than this entire industry of niche consultancies, massive global corporate brands, and independent specialists who all can charge through the nose for a product where effectively nothing is entirely guaranteed.

I was floored by a client who recently told me that they were going through an implementation of a large well-known system, and that they had just invested further in a new Payroll module that they were currently developing. Call me a fun sponge but I couldn’t help but ask why you would buy a product that they hadn’t even made yet or fully tested or that the market hadn’t given feedback on? The answer I received was a wry smile and a comment of “well they have a good brand and seem to know what they are doing!”. This to me just doesn’t stack up; spending a mild fortune on something that doesn’t exist on the basis that it is being sold by a reputable brand. Well on this basis, as soon as Virgin Galactic start flogging acres on the moon to colonize, I will be right in there with my life savings, as I’m sure the commercial space flights will start soon and that I will be able to build a Moon house for the family in 5-10 years up there. After all, Virgin brands have a pretty strong rep, right? It doesn’t matter how good or reputable a brand is, you surely can’t make a business decision on a product that doesn’t exist – isn’t that just too much of a gamble?

In 15 years of recruiting in the HR profession I have heard countless more HRIS implementation failures than I have of successes. I have seen so much money lost and wasted on poorly thought out solutions that have questioned my faith in the whole concept. I am seeing businesses regularly invest without a real understanding of what they are buying, in the hope that it will deliver the analytics capability it wants (amongst other things). This perhaps is the whole point of it all – we have created a multi billion dollar industry that feasts on the current lack of the “perfect product” and lack of a clear solution to genuinely deliver commercial successes for businesses through good data. I appreciate that every business is different and that success is measured entirely differently across organisations and sectors, but the lack of clear proof of organisations really getting it right, does give me cause for a concern.

When I browsed through HR Analytics commentary recently I stumbled upon a well-known commentator who every month puts out a brilliant piece titled “The Top 10 Analytics Articles of the month”. It’s always an interesting read, but the fact that there are even 10 articles written on the Analytics profession to choose from is a statement in itself. If I tried to compile a piece each month on the top 10 Reward articles, I would struggle to pull together more than two a month, if that! What’s the difference between the two industries? One remains a relative mystery without answer, and the other is entirely tangible with little room for conjecture or uncertainty.

Like the mystery around the Bermuda triangle, the HR Analytics arena is an area that will always cause debate without anyone having the exact perfect answer. Until we see large scale proven successes with global brands that have really nailed the data conundrum, using mainstream products, I can’t see the commentary saturation dying down. Perhaps that is a good thing though, as what would happen to the thousands of employees in thousands of companies that rely on this industry if someone actually came out with the ultimate data solution for companies? The story of analytics therefore rumbles on, but maybe the fact that it’s currently “never ending” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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