Human capital methodology and technology exist to illustrate value, and to reduce the guesswork in business decisions, said Laurence Collins, human capital analyst at Logica, at the 23 September seminar.

‘Not many people can take HR data and use it to control the outcome of an employee life-cycle event. For example, imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have to interview anyone; you could screen with clear questions; psychological profile tests, predictive technology, job sampling experience and from that be able to predict a good hire, profiled against known top performers.’

While it may not be desirable to move completely towards a ‘computer says no’ approach, we are already moving towards possessing the know-how to use data and analytics to transform the role of HR, he said, and reduce the error rates in areas like recruitment.

You need, ideally, to have support from the top of the organisation; a total commitment to fixing the data, and a real passion for analysis, he said.

There are three big hurdles on the journey, he said:
• Developing analytic capability,
• Data maturity – the ability to capture, access and aggregate the appropriate information necessary to align with specific objectives and measurement requirements, in ways which are accurate, complete and cost-effective.
• Business collaboration.