Big Data and its Relationship to HR Reporting

Posted by Mathew French

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27 March 2014

Reporting and analytics are two key aspects of a Human Resource Manager’s role. HR Managers reportedly spend over 15 hours a week creating reports. 

The above number is not surprising, as HR reporting and analytics are two factors that allow an organisation’s HR department to bring insight and decision making support to the management of people in organisations, ultimately helping the business move forward with its strategic direction.

big data human resources

As a business grows, however, their data continues to grow. Given the increase in organisations whose workforce is scattered throughout the globe, corporate data has grown exponentially. This rapid increase in data has been referred to as Big Data, and it is now another word common in many organisations.

Big Data has impacted HR significantly – causing complexities in reporting and analytics. Several organisations struggle with consolidating data from disparate systems and drawing a single unified version of insights, and therefore they believe reporting is riddled with complexities. As such only a small number of organisations believe they are effective at workforce analytics, according to research from a SAP subsidiary.

Research conducted by KPMG highlights that many organisations are beginning to embrace Big Data and leverage newer analytics tools to improve reporting. 56% of HR functions report an increase in using data analytics compared to three years ago and 23% reported that adopting data analytics would be their main focus in the next three years.

Despite this, research by Forbes finds only 4% of the 480 companies surveyed achieving the capability to perform predictive analytics about their workforce. What’s even more staggering is that only 14% of the companies have done any significant statistical analysis of employee data. The remaining 84% are dealing with data management and reporting challenges, and are still scrambling to get out of the burden of ad-hoc reports to deliver standard operational metrics.

How do organisations manage Big Data?

Big Data has four different characteristics:

  1. Data Complexity – Combining multiple types and sources of data that may be changing rapidly
  2. Data Volumes – Large data sets
  3. Calculation Complexity – Mathematical or computational complexity applied across data sets
  4. Unstructured Data – Often social data or other human input like engagement responses or exit interviews

Given the above characteristics of Big Data, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are more inclined to improve their current HR reporting in relation to the data so that they can access specific information more effectively and assist in making HR decisions that support the business in making workforce-related decisions. Considering the complexities of unstructured data, these SMEs rarely go into a consolidation process since it is more costly and complex to do so, especially with a mix of on-premise and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

On the other hand, large enterprises, with over 1500 employees, attempt to harness the power of Big Data to get clearer insight into their workforce. They typically manage complexity by consolidating all their information (structured and unstructured) into a repository through a query of multiple systems. Once this is done, data can be visualized through a best of breed interface / display. Essentially, their aim is to remove the complexities of multiple systems and have a single source of data.

Despite these methods, most organisations still struggle with reporting and analytics in relation to Big Data. The only way to navigate through these difficulties is to have a relentless focus on acquiring and storing good quality data. Because when it comes down to it, regardless of complexity, volume and structure, data can only generate accurate reports and valuable insight if they are of good quality. 

To discover more about managing Big Data in HR,, download our free eGuide on Productive HR Reporting by clicking the download button below. If you're ready to explore how HR Reporting software can transform your business, request a discovery session, where you'll get a customised demonstration from the comfort of your own desk.

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Topics: hr reports format, human resources reports, human resources analytics

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