Metrics and analytics have become the business buzzwords, post financial crisis, not just for finance and marketing professionals, but also for human resources.
And in the world of HR – where the issues dealt with are often the intangibles of business value, such as employee engagement – practitioners must now be able to produce evidence of their strategies' impact.
For instance, HR is expected to show how an organisation's training and development programmes are affecting business results and ultimately the bottom line. So what is behind this shift towards more evidence-based HR?
According to Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), it is being driven by massive changes in business thinking. He says: "We have reached a flexion point in business thinking, driven by the global financial crisis, issues around corporate behaviour, the social responsibility agenda and working environments; it is a big contextual shift.
"This is shaping the strategy for HR, and while this is an opportunity that the profession has often craved, it is also creating challenges. One of the areas where we have to improve is analytics. HR must be better at producing evidence."
But how can the profession become more analytical?
Collaborating with colleagues from other parts of the business, such as finance and marketing, has been identified as key to changing the way HR people think, interpret information, evaluate solutions and ultimately provide factual evidence as a basis for decision-making.
An example of this is Valuing your Talent, a research and engagement programme run by the CIPD with organisations such as Investors in People and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (Cima), which aims to help employers quantify the impact of their people.
HR professionals can enhance their CVs by broadening their analytical skills via a number of financial management training programmes, which are available through the CIPD's partnership with Cima.
Top Employers also produce fact-based data for HR departments to help them raise standards and working conditions for employees.
Cheese says: "By bringing people with different backgrounds into HR, for example, those with finance or marketing data skills and experience, we can elevate the position and impact that evidence-based HR has on the broader business strategy."
