I recently spoke to Richard Eckel of Macromicro (the company makes an HR analytics package) and the picture he painted should make us (even more) excited about the future of HR analytics.
One of his key messages is this: HR analytic tools are making a big leap forward.
The old way of doing analytics, which might be called “Request & Wait” is being eclipsed by new tools that let us “Explore & Inquire”. Here’s how they work:
Request & Wait: Decide what information you want; ask an analyst to prepare it, wait…
Get the results. This usually leads to a new question. Ask, wait…ask, wait…
Explore & inquire: Look at a visual representation of the data (e.g., retention by department); notice a trend; check by gender; notice an anomaly; drill down to that issue; look at the whole thing again by region…
Let me spell out what impresses me with the Explore & Inquire approach:
If, like me, you have grown up in a world where getting reports was slow and difficult, you may be truly surprised by what these new tools can do.
