HR analytics, also referred to as people analytics, workforce analytics, or talent analytics, involves gathering together, analyzing, and reporting HR data. It enables your organization to measure the impact of a range of HR metrics on overall business performance and make decisions based on data. In other words, HR analytics is a data-driven approach toward Human Resources Management.
HR analytics is a fairly novel tool. This means it is still largely unexplored in scientific literature. The best-known scientific HR analytics definition is by Heuvel & Bondarouk. According to them, HR analytics is the systematic identification and quantification of the people drivers of business outcomes (Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2016). We discuss this further in our People Analytics Certificate Program.
In the past century, Human Resource Management has changed dramatically. It has shifted from an operational discipline towards a more strategic one. The popularity of the term Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) exemplifies this. The data-driven approach that characterizes HR analytics is in line with this development.