HR and Talent Acquisition leaders have long lamented that their voices are underrepresented in the board room.  Often, you hear leaders in these departments say they lack a seat at the table.  SAP's Workforce 2020 study states that 52% of CEO's believed workforce issues were critical to organizational growth; however, less than half consulted HR or Talent Acquisition in matters of business growth and strategy. Thankfully, the introduction of Big Data and analytics has transformed HR and Talent Acquisition's roles in the boardroom. They are now change leaders, responsible for not only saving money for the organization, but driving strategy and economic growth. But how do analytics help drive strategy and growth in an organization? 

Using Analytics to Drive Strategy

Central to a discussion in organizational strategy is quantitative metrics.  Traditionally, HR and Talent Acquisition have relied upon qualitative metrics to drive conversation.  For this reason, these departments often weren't included in the most necessary organizational discussions.  Now, their contributions are quantifiable in dollars and cents. Consider the following ways in which HR and Talent Acquisition are being able to drive strategy and economic growth in the board room:

• Forecast hiring needs. Critical to the health of any organization is its ability to hire employees.  If an organization's human capital is its most valuable asset, having the right number of employees in an organization is critical to outperforming competitors. In industries such as healthcare, employee forecasting is critical to performance, which is now tied to complex ACA regulations. Using analytics, organizations can track historical hiring needs and forecast how many employees and contingent labor necessary to produce results.  Whether this is caring for patients during historically busy times of year or producing large volumes of products, employee forecasting can save organizations time, money, and productivity losses. 
• Reducing employee turnover costs.  One of the largest cost centers for an organization is employee turnover. Whether an employee is fired or leaves in the first 2 years, the ROI can be a whopping -298%, including productivity costs, costs to employee morale, and client relationships.  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the overall cost to hire and train someone new is 30% of the previous employee's salary. With analytics, HR and Talent Acquisition is better able to identify a better quality of hire and critical development paths. Using analytics, HR is able to introduce cost effective training and development programs which keep employees in the organization longer and enhance their job satisfaction.  
• Improve decision making.  Often, programs are introduced in organizations without consideration to their impact. One such area is in changing employee benefits or bonus programs.  These kinds of changes can seem cost effective in the moment, but they can have longer term implications down the line.  Using analytics, HR and Talent Acquisition can use data patterns and trends to predict how employees may behave, where there may be anticipated losses, and how this will either add to or detract from the bottom line. Managing workforce issues with analytics will become critical to organizational strategy. 
• Proactively manage risk. Across industries, risk is present in a variety of forms, whether that is in federal and state compliance regulations, labor lawsuits, loss of sales, and more.  Using analytics, HR and Talent Acquisition will be able to provide a detailed snapshot to the board room where the company is most at risk.  It will also provide a quantitative reason for action to manage risk proactively. 

We're living in the age of Big Data. HR and Talent Acquisition can no longer afford to inform business decision making based on qualitative information alone. Using quantitative data in the form of analytics, HR and Talent Acquisition are poised to become strategy drivers in the boardroom.