Data is going to be the core of HR operations, with the pandemic changing the role of the crucial functions in companies to include data augmentation, splicing and analysis in framing people policies, according to prominent recruitment and staffing ManpowerGroup India.
"The HR departments of big organisations these days analyse as much data as other departments like finance and sales," said Manpower senior director, sales and global accounts, Alok Kumar. It's not just personnel management anymore. They also talk from the data perspective, he added.
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This has become accelerated as large sections of the white-collar workforce have remained away from the office for the past 18 months due to pandemic-necessitated remote and hybrid work, leaving HR managers little scope to interact personally with employees.
Earlier, HR managers would use in-house sessions to convey the workplace culture to employees and carry their voices back to the top management to frame policies. Now they have to rely on data, Kumar told Business Today.
A LinkedIn search threw up hundreds of job openings across sectors with the titles of people analyst, HR analyst, staffing analyst and talent acquisition analyst. Qualifications required for the jobs included an engineering/computer science background and Excel, Alteryx and Tableau skills. Descriptions mentioned requiring bringing an analytics mindset with dashboards, data, and reports to the talent management cycle.
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Kumar said analysing a sample size won't be enough anymore to get an accurate picture. "Augmentation will play a vital role where we analyse the data of the whole organisation and not just the sample. This has to be spliced and sliced to find out what the voice of the employee is, what they are thinking and why a particular reaction is coming."
Training HR personnel in these skills and the use of technological tools is already underway in most companies, he said.
"The annual employee engagement surveys we used to conduct will become more frequent-quarterly and monthly. Otherwise, the HR industry won't be able to feel the pulse of the employees."
The firm places 3,500-4000 permanent white-collar employees a year, including senior executives, and has more than 550 clients across sectors such as engineering and manufacturing, healthcare & pharma IT, ITES, BPO & KPO, automobiles, BFSI, hospitality and retail, etc.
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