HRM practitioners often struggle to adopt a strategic function in their organization. Borrowing from evidence-based management, this paper highlights the importance of data for enabling better HRM decision-making as irregular decision-making processes can lead to mistakes. Often managers lack the time to evaluate the data and/or have incomplete data. Unfortunately, studies indicate that HRM practices are still heavily based on popular knowledge, misconceptions and behavioural/strategic assumptions of ‘what should work best’. Yet increasingly literature concedes that HRM practices impact performance and the relationship is by and large universal, thus demanding improved decisions through the relevant use of data which has been discussed for many years. The paper addresses important points in HRM analytics and emphasises that this requires HR practitioners to develop three important skill sets: an understanding of data treatment and analysis, the use of IT and knowledge of other business areas since like other fields of management, HRM is evolving and needs to adapt to changes at work to become more strategically relevant.
Much has been said about elevating the HRMgt function to strategic levels. Adopting a more evidence-based approach through the use of data analytics is considered an important driver in this direction. This provides a more potent decision-making resource that enables less biased and harder evidence which ultimately is more convincing. But will Strategic HRMgt adopting data-driven strategies require people in the profession to adopt new skills? This exploratory project is work-in-progress and presents initial interview results. Interviewees report that the use of HRMgt data analytics can certainly improve the strategic value of HR and that while the use of data can drive HR decisions more convincingly, HRMgt itself cannot be reduced or substituted by data. The participants also reported that HR professionals would require learning new skills, amongst them IT, analysis and interpretation of data. The project aims to eventually draw a number of attributes or skill-sets to this effect.
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