Tackling the HR digitalization challenge: key factors and barriers to HR analytics adoption

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>This paper aims to contribute to the literature on human resources (HR) digitalization, specifically on HR analytics, disentangling the concept of analytics applied to HR and explaining the factors that hinder companies from moving to analytics. Therefore, the central research questions addressed in this study are: what does HR analytics encompass? What impedes the adoption of analytics in HR within organizations?</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>The authors performed a comprehensive literature review on analytics as applied in HR. The authors relied on two of the major multidisciplinary publication databases (i.e. Scopus and WoS). A total of 64 manuscripts from 2010 to 2019 were content analyzed.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>The results reveal that there is an ongoing confusion on HR analytics conceptualization. Yet, it seems that there is an emerging consensus on what HR analytics encompasses. The authors have identified 14 different barriers for HR analytics adoption grouped into four categories, namely, data and models, software and technology, people and management. Grounding on them the authors propose a set of 14 key factors to help to successfully adopt HR Analytics in companies.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>This paper brings clarity over the conceptualization of HR analytics by offering a comprehensive definition. Additionally, it facilitates business and HR leaders in making informed decisions on adopting and implementing HR analytics. Moreover, it assists HR researchers in positioning their paper more explicitly in current debates and encouraging them to develop some future avenues of research departing from some questions posed.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

The dark sides of people analytics: reviewing the perils for organisations and employees

“…Prior integrative literature reviews have primarily focused on what people analytics is and how it operates (Falletta & Combs, 2020;Marler & Boudreau, 2017), how it should be implemented (Angrave et al, 2016;Boudreau & Cascio, 2017;Fernandez & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2020), the value proposition it offers (Tursunbayeva et al, 2018;van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017;Werkhoven, 2017a), and how it can influence performance (Aral et al, 2012;Peeters et al, 2020;Sharma & Sharma, 2017). Most of the prior integrating literature took a functional approach to people analytics (Peeters et al, 2020;van der Togt & Rasmussen, 2017), converging on how it can help improve firms' effectiveness, but paying less attention to this approach's ethical challenges, possible consequences, and risks (for exceptions, see conceptual papers, Gal et al, 2020;Leicht-Deobald et al, 2019).…”

“…This approach aims to raise the efficiency of core human resource (HR) functions such as workforce planning, recruiting, development and training, as well as to optimise employees' and the organiation's performance (Bodie et al, 2016;Gal et al, 2017;Leonardi & Contractor, 2018;Tursunbayeva et al, 2018). Consequently, it is hardly surprising that organisations worldwide are increasingly deploying people analytics to analyse and link data on human behaviour, social relationships and employee characteristics to internal or external business information (Fernandez & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2020;Leonardi & Contractor, 2018).…”

Fearless path for human resource personnel’s through analytics: a study of recent tools and techniques of human resource analytics and its implication

“…It is really important to inform the users about the use of analytics by explaining the business problem and not just the HR problem and treat that scenario similar to introducing change or rather to call for change management as IT integration is a new aspect of HRs to initiate their jobs. The organization also needs to develop good data secured systems, make use raw and processed data from both internal and external sources [ 63 ]. Once the necessities of the technology is met, it is important to ensure the training for the users on the technology which organization is planning to adopt for better working and clarity of concepts, the training with hands on experience will be more effective than only learning and understanding about the concepts.…”

“…Once the necessities of the technology is met, it is important to ensure the training for the users on the technology which organization is planning to adopt for better working and clarity of concepts, the training with hands on experience will be more effective than only learning and understanding about the concepts. The development of cross-functional analytical team will contribute to adoption process by focusing on developing team skills, storytelling skills and analytical skills which can help the learning, sharing and execution in more appropriate way for the user’s [ 63 , 64 ] and together the users can explore better than working individually on new technology. The organization should hire statistician, database management experts and data security experts to handle the statistics, data and reduce the fear of execution.…”

Hr Analytics: Why It Matters

“…A survey done by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in the year 2014 also confirms that decisions related to all functions whether in marketing, finances, sales or human resource in organization are dependent on their personal experience and intuition. Still many organization are lagging behind to adopt human resource analytics (Fernandez, & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2020;Vargas et.al, 2018;Marler& Boudreau, 2017) despite of avaibility access of information. Human resource analytics is data driven (Mohammed, & Quddus ,2019) and when it comes to mind its related only to statistical analysis i.e.…”