What Big Data Is and How It Relates to HR Analytics

AIHR Learning Bite: What Big Data Is and How It Relates to HR Analytics

In a way that is easy to remember, Big Data is something that can be best described by “the 4 Vs”: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity. 

Even though in terms of volume and velocity, HR data score relatively low, HR does have access to a large variety of both structured – for example employee data, pay information, and engagement scores and unstructured data, such as performance reviews and email content. Likewise, in terms of veracity, HR data can be quite messy and rather unreliable. Most importantly, however, HR data most definitely holds value, which, when leveraged appropriately, it can uncover workforce risks, make better people decisions and help in building a competitive advantage for the firm. 

More specifically, however, the point of intersection between Big Data and HR analytics is marked by whenever we talk about predicting employee turnover or the number of HR self-service tickets to optimize handling time we are working with large quantities of data that help us generate new workforce insights. This means that Big (HR) Data is the input for HR analytics.