Predictive HR metrics is the future of industry going forward, and there is an increasing need for HR teams to measure and optimize numbers, and start getting better with people analytics.

Predictive HR metrics helps build analytical models at the lowest levels of business – at an individual employee level by taking into consideration predictive behaviours, business rules, propensities, actions etc. It involves finding and quantifying hidden patterns in data using complex mathematical models which can be used to generate future predictive outcomes.

Employee attrition has been a growing concern among HR professionals in the recent past. Increasing talent shortage and skill gap has raised a high alert in the HR industry to pull forces and take analytics seriously to understand future trends in HR.

With advancements in technology, HR data is getting more sophisticated and managers of tomorrow are most often not aware on how to handle, manage and make most of the “big data” available.

HR managers today are increasingly feeling the need to leverage big data and improvise on hire to retire initiatives, the time lag in recruitment, training and practices used for employee retention. HR managers should be in a better position to understand, leverage, engage and retain top talent by the use of big data in HR analytics.

Companies today are taking towards “datafying” efforts, and HR professionals could reap significant dividends in the form of quality hire, reduction in employee turnover and leadership development. HR professionals should bear in mind when using data to not use it blindly, but back up and strengthen hypotheses. Do not let data alone make decisions for hire, train, retire and engagement programs within an organisation.

See: Why Your HR Data is Presumably Bad

Predictive HR metrics can help boost employee engagement efforts and facilitate better retention of productive workforce, through employee retention campaigns. Using social media, companies can dive into a large pool of talent and find the suitable hire. They can also do text analysis on hundreds of resumes in their databases and churn out talent by capitalising on the power of big data.

Gamification in HR is another important tool that bolsters employee engagement levels and it can also be used to gauge employee skillsets, thought processes and strategic decision making abilities. Predictive HR metrics can also be used to gauge employee interaction with co-workers and top performers to understand factors that need to be worked upon to improve productivity and efficiency on job.

Predictive HR metrics can only prove effective if used along with your current HRIS (Human Resource Information System) to understand happenings in the past, and predict outcomes in future through careful HR analytics. However, the one major challenge for HR professionals in using predictive metrics model is to build on capabilities and expertise to move from a descriptive retrospective approach model to a predictive one.

Through predictive HR metrics tools, professionals can quantify data and start making inroads into the critical analytical space with a sole objective to improve on smart decision making capabilities.

Also read: Why is Big Data Important to HR professionals?