Get ahead with predictive analytics

By Stephen Shelton

Business service firms come in many forms in terms of what they do – whether it’s recruitment, legal services, facilities management or anything else – but they all have one thing in common; their biggest and single most important asset is their people. Business services firms are, ultimately, people businesses, which means that the way in which they manage their biggest asset is often the difference between success and failure.

Finding and keeping the talent they need is a constant worry for organisations, particularly in the highly-connected, competitive modern workplace. In such a world, information is power, which is why in our most recent CEO survey, 80% of business leaders said that data analysis is now a strategic priority. In particular, strategic workforce planning has become a competitive differentiator – those organisations that can predict the skills and talent they will need, and where and when they will need it, have the competitive edge.

Another of our recent studies, Key Trends in Human Capital 4: A new vision for growth, explained how predictive analytics (testing hypotheses with relevant historic data) are increasingly being used in HR to gain more insight into people decisions. The problem is that until now, too many organisations have limited their use of available people data to describe what’s already happened, rather than using the data as a basis for predicting what might happen, and what that means they should do about it.

Predictive analytics can help you identify which of your employees are most likely to succeed in your organisation and which present the biggest risk to performance. It can help you raise the quality of new hires, and identify long and short-term talent supply problems while you still have time to do something about it. It’s an incredibly powerful tool.

We recently worked with a client to help them identify which of their top performers are most at risk of leaving the company, using predictive analytics. We produced a list of individuals identified as the top flight risks – and it was so accurate that within a few weeks of completing it, two of the people on the list had resigned. This kind of evidence-driven insight into people risk is new, rare and potentially game-changing. It is transforming the role of HR professionals across all industries.

Previous generations of management could only dream about the insight that predictive analytics brings to people decisions. The challenge now is to cut through the noise and uncover the power behind your people data– can you really afford not to?

For more information contact me or your PwC advisor.

Stephen Shelton

Director, One Firm Data Analytics Transformation
Office: +44 (020) 7212 4218
Email: [email protected]