Human Resource departments are tasked with analyzing a multitude of factors to find potential employees who will thrive in their respective companies, and some are calling for an increased emphasis on cold hard facts and objective statistics to achieve that goal.
Drawing comparisons to the critically acclaimed baseball book and film “Moneyball,” which explores how the financially strapped Oakland Athletics compete against big market franchises like the New York Yankees by measuring player success with carefully crafted, often revolutionary, statistical assessments, a number of experts noted an HR trend to look at the benefits of boiling employment candidates down to raw numbers. It appears the HR model could be on the cusp of a significant shift.
What’s the Right Dose of ‘Human?’
There are lots of components to a job interview; resume, face-to-face questions, reference calls and tests, and all are part of the process that ultimately leads to the final decision on who to hire.
But, as this Huffington Post article notes, some companies are turning to the Bill James model- the mastermind behind the uber-statistical baseball team building strategy- to help make the best choice. In hiring practice, this is called Human Capital Analytics and it is predicated on the idea that the success of employees can also be predicted by using carefully crafted mathematical formulas.
The article describes some key takeaways from an HR roundtable that addressed some of these topics. Interestingly, the roundtable discussion yielded near-consensus conclusions that creative elements, and others that represent what’s most “human,” are still essential to hiring a diverse and successful team. The statistics are meaningless, the article contests, unless someone figures out how to use them.
The Fine Ethical Line of “People Analytics”
The trend has caught the eye of executives from around the world. A CBC News article enumerates how Andrew Martin of the Joey restaurant chain has embraced the Big Data approach to hiring.
He heaped praise of the Moneyball strategy and noted his hiring style is like that of the A’s and so many other teams now employing the technique. His goal, he said, it to get each employee scored with a single number to make the decision as clear-cut as possible.
However, business ethics professor Chris MacDonald warned people are more than a simple statistic and the strategy can actually backfire. "It may well be a self-defeating mechanism if you're trying to manage people by being incredibly precise by measuring their performance. If that measurement process becomes demoralizing for staff, you've shot yourself in the foot," he states in the CBC piece.
Others warn that enthusiasm and initiative are hard to quantify. In Canada, it could be offensive and counter-cultural to reduce people down to a single number, as well.
The Practicality of Using the Tools Matters, Too
In a Wall Street Journal article, JoAnne Kruse, chief human resources officer of American Express Global Business Travel warns that the customized analytics tools that finance and marketing departments are often privy to may not fit so easily into the need of HR departments.
She said that even though HR departments often collect more raw data than other departments, the analytics tools are often not tailored to human resource management. With the right technology, though, a new dynamic evaluation system could help bring employee programs to the next level.
The “forward-thinking companies” are already starting to give their HR teams the right tools to make the most of the data available. HR analytics is one of many areas delving deep into the objectivity of math and statistics. While there will likely be doubt, pushback and criticism of the relative dehumanization of employees, there is no doubt that marked success will be used to defend the practice.
If baseball turns out to be indicative of the HR trend, the most recent Boston Red Sox World Series victory speaks volumes about how people will be hired going forward.