Here is a brief article written by Sarah Fister Gale for Talent Management magazine. She explains why adoption of predictive analytics in talent management has been slow, but a few companies have shown how it can positively influence business. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

Image courtesy of Flickr/Erich Ferdinand

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Though it may take a couple of more years before predictive analytics becomes a mainstream feature in the talent manager toolkit, these stories show predictive analytics is attainable even without sophisticated approaches. Below, experts offer advice on how to get started with predictive analytics.

[Here are the first three “tricks.”]

1. Partner with other analytics driven teams.

“Analytics skills don’t typically come out of HR,” said Karen O’Leonard, vice president of benchmarking and analytics research at Bersin by Deloitte, an HR research and consulting firm. So you either need to hire that skill to your team, or work with finance or IT to bring their expertise to your initiative.

2. Think of the broader skill set.

Many people think that statistics skills are most important when applying analytics, said Patrick Coolen, manager of HR metrics at ABN AMRO Bank, based in Amsterdam. “They are right about the importance, but it is definitely not the only skill needed,” he said. “Business knowledge, HR knowledge, communication and consulting skills, IT and data architecture knowledge, and data visualization skills are also vital to do analytics.”

3. Make analytics business relevant.

Coolen, the predictive analytics leader at ABM AMRO, said that all of his statistical research starts with real business problems, rather than workforce issues. “Our strategy is to stay close to our business needs and business application and improve on our technical and statistical skills in parallel.”

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance journalist with more than 20 years experience writing about a wide range of topics, including parenting issues, workforce and talent management strategies, sustainability, clean energy, corporate learning, the pharmaceutical industry, food safety, and more. To read more of her articles, please click here.