Research by Deloitte, Bersin, LinkedIn, and others highlights the implications of people analytics trends for HR professionals. In particular, the data reflects a significant gap between the perceived importance of people analytics and associated analytical skills. In their 2018 Human Capital Trends report, Deloitte noted that 85% of participating companies consider people data “important” or “very important” but only 42% indicated they were either “ready” or “very ready.” Similarly, Deloitte’s 2017 Human Capital Trends report found that 71% of companies see people analytics as a high priority, but only 9% believe they have a good understanding of which talent dimension drives performance in their organizations.^[1]

Bersin’s conversations with executives underscore these findings. He relates a conversation with a CHRO who stated: “I’m tired of hiring HR professionals that don’t know the difference between a median and a mean. I’m thinking of asking all my HR teams to take a course in statistics.”^[2] Related perspective point: “research shows that one of the biggest factors that predicts success in People Analytics is not just the skills of the analytics team – it’s the skill set of the HR business partners, analysts, and staff.” Bersin notes that it is human resources management’s responsibility to interpret people analytics for leaders—“[showing] him or her data which points out that their team has bias, poor work practices, weak skills, failing culture, or other problems that can be proven with data.”

From a market perspective, LinkedIn reports that in the last five years (since March 2018), the number of HR professionals who list analytics skills and keywords on their profiles has tripled.^[3] On the demand side, workforce productivity research firm Institute for Corporate Productivity, Inc. (i4cp) states that approximately 50% of high-performance organizations plan to increase their people analytics budget in 2019.^[4] However, the firm notes that “as people analytics functions mature, finding and/or developing the right talent continues to be a barrier.”