The San Francisco Chronicle (and several other places) have featured an article on Google using an algorithm to predict the people likely to leave. I have been avoiding this post ever since the Chronicle article…because I have such mixed feelings.
Some things I like:
- Google cares this much about the workforce – as we all should!
- REAL predictive analytics finally gets a showing! So many people are using the term predictive analytics about things which are really just metrics and reporting…it’s a wonderful thing to see real PA at least being thought about.
- This will add value…but maybe not in the obvious way
Some things I worry about:
- The algorithm can only use historical data, and given layoffs, Google’s slide from the #1 Best Place to Work spot, the economy and a whole lot of other current and recent change, that might miss some key items
- Google searches are great, but they don’t get everything…and if management at Google starts to think that they do, there is a serious risk of complacency and so further loss of focus on the value of human management (“oh, Jane didn’t show up on the output of the algorithm this month, so she mustn’t be about to leave”)
- HR data is much more limited than internet data, so there is a serious risk that the model won’t have enough data points to be relevant. Yes, great mathematicians can overcome many shortcomings…but maybe not that one
- If we predict individual human behavior, what risks do we open up? Lawsuits, even? What if we get it wrong about Sally and don’t promote her because the algorithm said she’s likely to leave? Sure, we already do that in management heads, but what’s the legal situation once it comes from an algorithm?
- Then there are the people worrying about Big Brother: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/20/internet-behavior-englebart-intelligent-technology-google.html?feed=rss_news
Some lessons for us all:
- It’s a good idea to focus at least a part of our organization’s innovative power on our workforce…after all, they ARE our innovative power!
- We need to be more rigorous about workforce decisions
- Maybe we need to keep our “predictions” to groups, not individuals
- Really smart companies are focusing serious energy on doing workforce planning
There is a lot of potential in PA (Aruspex is loving it right now), but it can’t replace human decision making…or can it? What do you think?
Hey Stacy, human decision making, whilst we like to think is highly rational, is more often an instinctive process (Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" is a great read about this).
Whilst this instinctive process can aggregate hundreds of obvious and non-obvious information signals into a "gut-feel" about staff management issues it is also subject to distorting perceptual biases. This can leave the manager that relies entirely on it open to being blindsided by the unexpected.
It would be interesting to see if organisations that use predictive analytics then correlate the predicted outcome with the actual outcome over time. Use evidence based methods to record the accuracy of the system and see if it can aid and improve human decision making.
Ash, we certainly have clients who DO watch this, but only with aggregates. This approach of predicting individuals is proving a little scarier! And what about self-fulfilling prophesies??
Predicting how Individuals will perform is already an accepted and proven fact today in the US. The US FICO score is a predicted score of an individual's credit worthiness and is used in our everyday life. The facts show that people who defaulted on loans in this housing crash, were people that had a FICO score that should have prevented them from getting a loan in the first place. Talk about a self fulling prophecy.
For the workforce, your bosses boss or even your boss's boss's boss has final say on what raise you get, bonus, promotion, etc. Is their intuition good enough to make the right decisions for you as an individual they may only know from a few meetings or passing in the hall? Predictive Analytics in the workforce will be able to provide them with the facts and the impacts of the decision they are about to make.
How can a workforce plan be strategic if you can't determine it's actual impact? Without it, it's just guessing and becomes an unadjusting snapshot in time.
I agree completely on the performance piece...but predicting resignations is a bit shiftier ground.
Post a Comment