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People Analytics Feels Like It Would Be Very Hard To “Scale”
If you’ve never heard of ‘people analytics,’ essentially it’s a concept that takes Big Data and applies it to HR and management. Since I often write about Big Data, HR, and management, this seemed like a natural extension that I could also write about. I touched on the concept of people analytics in a post over a year ago (here) and I might return to some of those arguments later.
Alright, so now we have a vague understanding of what people analytics is: a data-driven approach to hiring and management. On surface, this seems pretty logical. Companies create brand-new jobs sometimes, yes, but in general a lot of jobs have been around for a few years, been held by 2+ people, and we might have some data on who does well and who does less well. That could influence hiring. Right? And management! Well, we’ve had managers in companies for decades. Centuries in some cases! And we know who tends to be more effective and how they tend to work, no? So we could make some decisions around promotions and team alignment that way. People analytics! Yea! Let’s do it!
It’s not nearly that simple. It’s gonna take a while.
