Let’s be brutally honest; 2020 isn’t the year that managements and HR woke up to the fact that we need information. More like 1998 and earlier, so why is it such a big deal now?
Savvy managements and HR managers have been using data from their HR systems for decision making ever since it became available. Now, of course, modern software enables much easier access to that information, and this is important; automated schedules, self-service gateways and simpler report writers make it all possible.
So, for the First Law, I would state that “HR will take responsibility to ensure that their organisation has an HR system configurable to meet its process and information needs.”
Following on from the perception that HR analytics were invented ten minutes ago, are we saying that managements have been flying blind all these years? Well, yes, at least partially. I’ve seen the turmoil when an urgent request for employee information is handed down from above. Panic. The inaccurate and un-updated info in the system they have is exported into excel, and then hours of tweaking and manipulation, as unprocessed leavers, starters and changes are changed around. The report that eventually ends up with management is still strewn with inaccuracies at the end of it all.
