How does your HR department make key decisions? Your personal experience? Cold, hard data? An educated guess? Gut feeling? All of the above? 

Making major HR decisions is difficult. There are countless dependencies and variables, especially when you’re unsure what the future holds. That’s why more and more companies are turning to predictive analytics to predict outcomes for their business and plan accordingly.

Using HR data can be legally and ethically complicated, but if analyzed with care, it can also be a team’s greatest asset. Because of these very real concerns, in the past information often went unused, but today, wise companies are turning facts into insight. When processed ethically, data can inform an office when employees will leave, where to recruit solid candidates, and most importantly, how to keep these candidates happy once they become employees. And this isn’t merely a suggestion: according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 82% of surveyed organizations plan to either begin or increase their use of big data in HR before the end of 2018. The crucial point here isn’t simplicity but effectiveness: when HR data is braided effectively with a company’s strategic aims, wellbeing increases across the board.