Big Data is big news, and workforce analytics got some press this month under the guise of Big Data - even though the tools and benefits of workforce predictive analytics have been around for years.  Is there more to come?

Over on this post about Cultural Change at Aetna, I mentioned that there were two Harvard Business Review Articles of particular interest to Strategic Workforce Planning - that posts covers the first of these.

The second article that came to my attention was Making Advanced Analytics Work for You, part of a series of articles about "Big Data".  This article sites an example of where a predictive model for workforce planning made a direct contribution to the bottom line.  
"Ultimately, that approach of using a simple tool to deliver complex analytics substantially improved workforce planning and reduced the need for new hires and overtime."
Using a ssimple tool to deliver complex analytics substantially improved workforce planning and reduced the need for hires and overtime

It's interesting that it took Big Data to get the benefits of workforce analytics into HBR - when the tools and benefits have been around for years!  Still, we can expect to hear more and more about the benefits of data analysis and predictive modeling over the coming years, and that can only be a good thing for workforce planning.


posted by Alex Hagan