HR Leaders Adapting Quickly to Workforce Analytics

February 2, 2016 – The vast majority of HR leaders (85 percent) believe an integrated talent management approach in which workforce planning encompasses all types of talent will enhance the resources their businesses need to drive growth, according to Randstad Sourceright’s “2016 Talent Trends Report” a newly-released talent trends report.

The study was developed with the feedback from nearly 400 HR, talent acquisition and professional business leaders spanning more than 60 countries.

The report found that the use of talent and workforce analytics continues to increase, with 73 percent of respondents using this data to create more efficient workforce planning, 63 percent for more accurate mapping and addressing of skills gaps and 56 percent for identifying high-potential employees for development.

When asked about the biggest trends impacting the future of work in the next five to 10 years, the top responses were the need to create greater flexible working options to attract mobile talent (85 percent), the ability to analyze internal and external employee data to source and retain talent (78 percent) and the challenge of keeping pace with evolving technology to enhance workforce productivity and performance (74 percent).

The use of workforce analytics is something HR professionals need to adapt to if they haven’t already. According to research from Aon Hewitt, future CHROs will need to be cognizant of the rapid progress in HR technology, particularly SaaS solutions, to improve HR processes and analytic capabilities.

This concurs with Jobvite’s recent Recruiter Nation Survey, which found that 72 percent of recruiters acknowledged data analytics as somewhat important or very important.

“Recruiters need to get creative and take a multipronged approach using insights gleaned from analytics, and mobile tools, while engaging the entire organization to help find and hire top talent,” said Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan. “That’s how winning companies will stay one step ahead in this competitive career landscape.”

Each year sees the emergence of new challenges in talent management, opportunities to improve existing processes and promising techniques and technologies that will disrupt the status quo, said Rebecca Henderson, chairman, global leadership team of Randstad Sourceright and group president, talent solutions, Randstad U.S.

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“As the workforce management and technology landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, HR and talent leaders must understand how they can leverage new tools and capitalize on the power of talent analytics to adapt their strategies and account for these changing trends,” she said.

Randstad itself seems to be taking some advice from its own surveys. The firm recently led a seed financing in Focus Orange Technology through its Randstad Innovation Fund (RIF). The investment is centered around the development of Crunchr, Focus Orange’s analytics platform. Crunchr collects, validates and consolidates people data into meaningful insights around strategic workforce planning, succession, talent management and employee preferences.

“Crunchr fits Randstad’s objective to offer comprehensive total talent management solutions,” said Linda Galipeau, Randstad executive board member. “We have high expectations of Crunchr’s HR-analytics tool and of its potential to give our clients insights in their human capital and workforce planning.”

Other companies have also stepped up with investments in HR technology. Just last week, CoreHR, a provider of cloud-based human capital management and payroll software, received an investment from JMI Equity, a growth equity firm focused on investing in software and services companies, and JMI Services LLC, which is the family investment company of John J. Moores.

In November, Talentsoft, a global, privately held leader for cloud-based talent management solutions, completed a funding round of $27 million. The round was led exclusively by Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division. The company’s software application suite provides an end-to-end talent management solution, ranging from recruiting to learning, and from compensation to performance management.

Market intelligence provider IDC forecasts high future growth in the talent management applications sector as organizations adopt digital business models and new work practices. “We see customer demand changing from niche talent applications to broader, SaaS-based talent and human capital management suites,” said IDC associate vice president Bo Lykkegaard.

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