There is an ideological shift that is occurring among organizational development professionals – where they are shifting from traditional models of workforce evaluation towards the realm of Talent Analytics. I came across an article by Jeanne Harris, executive research fellow and senior executive at the Accenture Institute, where she discusses not only how analytics are being used in today’s changing business climate, but the key components of an effective analytics campaign.
Most organizations fail to look at how well employees goals and motivations align with organizational strategies, which ultimately, can lead to serious organizational problems. We see this happening in a slew of fields ranging from Sales, M&A and HR to several other fields whose success is largely contingent on talent management and whose strategies fail to align with those of their workforce.
Take for example Soccer Powerhouse AC Milan – one of the wealthiest athletic franchises in sports history. They spent millions of dollars in a lucrative deal to bring a certain player to their team. Less than a month after the deal went through, the player blew his knee out and was no longer valuable to the elite team. Managers realized that they needed to rethink how they were going about finding Talent that align with the not just the goals, but the needs of the organization.
After the high profile and embarrassing situation unfolded, ACM managers realized they needed a far more efficient way of analyzing their talent. They formed a Research group that:
“Analyzed every aspect of a player’s moves-how they run, how they jump- and analyzed the likelihood that they were going to become injured’”(Harris, Accenture 1).
Through this in depth research of their team, they were able to use their data for far more than purchasing decisions. They could inform their players about ways they could improve, essentially aligning the needs of the organization with those of the players and vice versa.
This ‘necessary’ exchange of data allowed for data to more accurately define strategies and the alignment of those strategies in relation to the players. AC Milan uses over 50,000 data points for each player; 200 deriving just from a players jump. Their implementation of talent analytics has in turn created a method for managers to not only stay on top of their investments but methodically increase their ROI. We see through Jeanne Harris that several organizations are implementing talent analytics in their organizations. Companies such as E&J Gallo Winery, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Harrah’s Entertainment all have implemented analytics as a strategy that’s not only different from conventional methods but sustainable….and this is what Talent Analytics is all about: Aligning organizational strategies with workforce intelligence.
You can read the Jeanne Harris Article HERE
http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/736DD726-95B4-40BD-A64F-5ABBA3530ED7/0/Accenture_Analytics_Examples_Transcript.pdf
