What is the HR Analytics ThinkTank researching in 2019?

Originally posted in 2019

This week at the first London HR and People Analytics meetup of 2019 we launched the fourth year of HR Analytics ThinkTank research. Over one hundred HR analytics leaders have bought into our vision of analysing HR and people analytics practice, helping us to generate insights to answer practical questions about HR analytics strategy, and improve the decisions we make when building functions. As its founder and chair, it fills me with a sense of excitement and pride to talk about the research taking place over the next year. By reading the below, hopefully you'll be excited too.

Four years researching HR and people analytics practices
Firstly, simply put, it is the fourth year of research! That's a fourth year of supporting industry growth by sharing free, quality research conducted on every type of HR analytics function that exists - many of whom we've tracked year on year, as their story and value has evolved. Leveraging our global community of HR analytics practitioners, our historic data sets (qualitative and quantitative), how can we build on our insights in 2019? What types of decisions are leaders making over time that result in different types of business/people impact - and how can we replicate or even accelerate that impact in other organisations?

What are some example insights have we found so far?

Who is the HR Analytics ThinkTank Research Team?
I'm almost more excited about working with our researchers than I am the topics being covered. In 2017, the HR Analytics ThinkTank partnered with @Andy Charlwood and the University of Leeds, bringing a level of academic quality to our approach, and producing our annual How do organisations build HR analytics functions? industry report.

This year we are happy to renew our partnership with Leeds, and also add two more academic leaders to the team: @Sharna Wiblen, Assistant Professor at Sydney Business School at the University of Wollongong, and @Mike Ulrich, Assistant Professor at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.

What topics will be researched?
Combining such an experienced and thought-diverse academic team with our rich databases of historic case studies and interviews, there are many different aspects of HR and people analytics strategy we could analyse. For example: how to better engage stakeholders, how to better serve evidence (insights) to HR and business, what skills, structures and governance make better analytics teams, what technologies to use, data to capture and metrics to view. Whilst these will all be covered in blogs, the core research this year will focus on:

• The annual industry trend report How are organisations building HR analytics functions in 2019?
• How do HR professionals make decisions, and how can analytics teams better provide the evidence they need? What do HR managers need to even know about data science?
• What does an HR analytics career look like, and what do the best leaders and practitioners have in common?

Why would you join the HR Analytics ThinkTank global community?
Whilst everything we research is made available for free, in exchange for your time and contribution to our research, we delighted to offer some exclusive content too:

• Research participants get first access to any new content produced by the ThinkTank, and access to existing content
• HR analytics leaders can request free industry benchmarks ('How does my function compare with other 2 year old functions?') or specific case studies ('How far away is my function from being able to deliver value from predictive attrition modelling?')
• Want to talk to other HR analytics practitioners? Want to see real examples of HR analytics in practice? Anyone can join the HR Analytics ThinkTank online forum, and watch video recordings our our grassroots meetups and meetup partners from around the world.
• HR analytics leaders who take part in the research can also join our monthly sharing webinars, featuring other HR analytics leaders from around the world - and watch all the previous ones on the forum too.

Want to take part? What does it require?
We are looking for HR analytics leaders (do you run the function?) and HR data practitioners (do you work with data or share the results?) who are willing to take part in the research - most participants will be asked to complete a short survey (10min), and may then be invited to take an interview with a professor (1 hour) between now and the end of March.

I hope this is an interesting and exciting to you as it is to us. If you would like to take part, please register your interest here.