Big Data? What Data?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Big Data of late. It’s hard not to. Many people believe it’s the answer to a lot of problems. And as a researcher who likes getting his hands on a bunch of stats, people have expected me to have an opinion.

Reading this this CIPD report made me think I ought to think about more my thoughts. Because what’s been running round my head is “What data?” I perfectly can see how a retailer has all the transactional data. And especially if they have loyalty schemes / log-ins, they can look at that by type of customer, by region, against historical data, by types of product etc etc. There’s lots of hard data, and there’s lots of ways to cut it. The other trope that’s routinely reeled off is Moneyball. Baseball is a stats driven sport, with every aspect of the game being readily quantified against the opposition, stage of game, against left-right handers etc etc

What I haven’t been convinced of, and haven’t been by this report, is that there’s an analogy to working life. The report suggests three types of data: people data (demographics, skills, reward, engagement etc), programme data (attendance, adoption, participation in programmes and key projects and assignments) performance data (performance ratings and data captured from 360, goal attainment, talent, succession programmes and talent and assessment). And for me, right there is the problem. There may be data, but it is not automatically captured – there isn’t that retail or baseball analogy.

Much of that data has to assessed, possibly with some subjective judgements. And even if it’s purely objective, it will depend on the skill of the manager and/or the arsedness of the employee to get it right. It’s a massive leap from where we are now to the assertion that “Generally it is felt that HR data will be revolutionised by big data.”

Right now, I don’t think there’s really good data. By all means try and create it - there would be fantastic value. But for now, let’s look at what we can reliably and more easily measure, and let’s include staff surveys of all types in there. Then let’s use that as a pointer to the conversations you should be having with employees to understand what matters to them and how you can make the greatest difference to them and their ability to serve your customers.