Redefining jobs is becoming a critical part of an HR person’s job. These emerging roles, such as the Chief Content Officer or Chief Happiness Officer, are requiring workers to understand how to harness and wield big data to make decisions that generate return on investment. If managers need these roles to be data-driven, then they themselves also should make their hiring decisions based on talent analytics. However, many organizations still rely on latent personality data to guide these key hires, which all too often can result in a lot of lost time, resources, and productivity.
Traditional assessment tools and people analytics are not the same thing. Traditional personality assessment tools can provide you with a static overview of an employee that was pulled from one particular place and time. People analytics, on the other hand, is an evolving set of data that tells the true story of an employee in real time.
Since these emerging job titles are being born out of a steady evolutionary flow, it’s only right that we apply this same concept to our potential candidates for these roles—especially if they are current, longtime employees you may have been eyeing for a promotion. People analytics can show you how they’ve adapted to changes over time, which is exactly what emerging job titles are. It’s also important to note that even entry-level jobs are being affected as they become increasingly sophisticated.
Change is more constant now rather than episodic. Companies don’t have the time to aggregate employee data, because things just move too fast. The emerging roles of today are a response to the disrupted environment in which we do business now.
Don’t expect this trend to slow down any time soon. Therefore, it’s advantageous to use people analytics so you can not only make the right hires today, but also map out the future state of your entire workforce and make decisions accordingly. Imagine the scenario in which you must adjust job requirements in an instant—being able to immediately identify who in your data pool would fit into your current and future positions would be a game changer.
This is the promise of real-time, in-depth talent analytics—the gift of making hires based on performance that is validated through job competencies, rather than through traits. For example, if one of your employees is “too much” of an expert, has that affected his risk-taking or ability to think on his feet? Traditional assessment tools that are based on traits cannot tell you this, but people analytics that tell their whole story can.
Moving forward, people analytics will help HR to function as a resource for the C-suite, so talent managers will have actionable data that lays out the competencies required for emerging roles companies will be filling in the years to come.
Simply put, we need to standardize how we talk about people; human-understandable talent analytics are an evolution in the world of work.
Ronald F. Wolff is SVP of Talent Development at Caliper, a talent management consulting firm that concentrates on the assessment and development of new hires and existing employees. For more than 50 years, CALIPER has helped over 30,000 organizations worldwide to improve critical aspects of managing talent. For more information, visit www.calipercorp.com.
