Human Resources has been an ever-changing discipline. The HR evolution has almost been on the same par as the technological revolution.  Human resources, having gone from being the event and party planners to the paperwork pushers to corporate business partners is about to undergo a number of other changes. The evolution has been slow at times but change has always been in motion.   In recent years, we have seen the movement to place a number of traditional HR functions in the hands of supervisors and managers. The variety of functions now handed to front line supervisors varies but can include duties such as recruitment selection, and employee relations.  This encroachment should not be viewed as a bad thing; in fact, it may be one of the most important segways to greater advancements in the human resources field.

Probably the most significant change in HR is the use of Big Data.  While big data is being used now, it is not being used to its full capabilities even in the largest, most progressive of companies.   Big data has been used almost exclusively by marketing, product development and sales as a way to predict human behavior in marketing, manufacturing and retail.  But this data can also be collected and used more effectively to determine training and development needs and to more effectively bring new more compatible employees into the corporate culture. More and more companies are moving towards investing in Big Data and other tools such as onboarding programs to gather more accurate and timely analytics. Using accurate and timely data are crucial in providing critical data for better and faster business decisions and for developing stronger, better staff members.  In a recent study of 480 large organizations, only 4% have achieved the capability to effectively provide “predictive analytics”.  (1)

Companies that find mining Big Data out of their expertise or price range have a number of other options to get the power, flexibility and business decision making edge that it provides.  The good news is that there are a number of onboarding solutions that utilize all available data to sharpen the decision making edge of companies from an HR standpoint, from a productivity stand point and from an overall business decision making stance.