Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/65226
Industry Standards The techniques have been widely used in other fields such as financial services, telecommunications, retail, travel, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, and have been applied to problems such as customer relationship management, clinical decision support systems, fraud detection, and cross-selling. It is argued that the adoption of predictive analytics in the HR field will positively impact the quality of intelligence that can be used for business benefit. Predictive analytics is being used more and more to make predictions about behaviour, investments, and performance as it relates to a firm's human capital. HR applications include the prediction of employee turnover, the identification of high-risk employees, building of profiles of those most likely to leave or stay, and understanding of how risk is distributed throughout an organisation. Why is this game changing? HR has the label of being the historical recorder of "what has been." The widespread adoption of predictive analytic techniques will be a revolution in the value HR can uniquely bring to the people agenda. 5. Employer branding and global talent management The expansion of the territory considered part of a global talent management system into more marketing-driven concerns such as market-mapping and employer branding (also called workforce branding) means that increasingly employers look to control the "employment experience" and use it as a tool for building their larger brand and to establish themselves as employers of choice. Companies have begun to think more strategically about this asset and a cottage industry has grown up to support them. Under the employer branding umbrella, initiatives include: researching into 'consumer insights' with current and potential employees, sister companies, external agencies, and benchmarking with external companies; managing the talent pipeline by trying to recruit The Vote: Five From Within ahead of the curve; communicating an awareness in graduate schools and businesses to get the people they are looking for; developing internal talent pools around the world; creating skilled and competent teams of assessors in different areas of the world; managing recruitment suppliers on a global basis; introducing speed, cost, and quality controls; establishing master contracts to coordinate the messages conveyed and the use of preferred partners; ensuring audit trails to protect against legal issues associated with global diversity; e-enabling jobs notice boards; and redesigning websites to convey important messages about the employer brand. Why is this game changing? Consultants, technology companies, and service providers now offer a new range of products and services designed to help companies take control of their workforce brand and put it to use to drive recruiting, retention, financial performance, and their total brand asset-base. Four From Across the Business 6. Aiming professional service and transactional support at line managers—removing the intermediary of the HR manager Traditionally, there have been separate provisions of what might be termed professional HR services, as against transactional HR services provided by more widely known BPO companies, with the two operating in different market places. Recently a number of organisations, such as Advisor Plus's offering of Intelligent HR, have started to provide line managers (not HR) with guidance and support in all of their transactions with their people, including legal issues with services supported by bespoke software and systems. Why is this game changing? Where this type of model differs from the standard HR outsourcing providers is its focus away from so-called transactional HR support towards a provision for clients/partners in the area of professional HR. HR is not seen as the principal agent for dealing with and managing people, but instead the line manager is seen as the main channel for people performance, productivity, and high motivation. Such approaches create the facility for organisations to release HR business partners from many operational HR issues, thus allowing them to focus upon genuinely strategic HR issues. These developments ask a number of important questions regarding in-company HR structures, including issues of quality, numbers, and allocation of internal HR resources. 1. Technologies for strategy 2. Technologies for social media 3. Technologies for L&D 4. Big data and analytics 5. Branding and talent management 7. The commoditisation of centres of excellence (COEs) and export of activities to the line A core notion is that HR could be facing diffusion or even disintegration, as much of the high-end functional knowledge in traditional centres of expertise, such as talent management, becomes more commoditised and embedded in line managers and business WINTER 2012 | www.hroglobal.com [25]