HBR's 10 Must Reads for HR Leaders Collection (5 Books)

Better People Analytics

by Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor

“WE HAVE CHARTS AND GRAPHS to back us up. So f *** off.” New hires in Google’s people analytics department began receiving a laptop sticker with that slogan a few years ago, when the group probably felt it needed to defend its work. Back then people analytics—using statistical insights from employee data to make talent management decisions—was still a provocative idea with plenty of skeptics who feared it might lead companies to reduce individuals to numbers. HR collected data on workers, but the notion that it could be actively mined to understand and manage them was novel—and suspect.

Today there’s no need for stickers. More than 70% of companies now say they consider people analytics ...