Tech Is Transforming People Analytics. Is That a Good Thing?| Harvard Business Review

Earlier this year, I made a post on LinkedIn’s 2020 Global Talent Trends report, which outlined four trends that are changing the way organizations hire and retain talent. In that 93-page report, which can be accessed through the post link, one trend is people analytics (PA) – (pages 27-45). And while the rise of PA was well in motion before the pandemic, the crisis has accelerated the use of data to understand and predict employees’ behaviors. However, as mentioned in this HBR article, as firms continue to leverage people analytics, it is essential to deploy these tools ethically. In fact, a recent article in Personnel Today highlighted how H&M Group, a family of retail brands, was fined for intrusive data collection and analysis of hundreds of employees’ activities. The HBR article notes that one way to address the privacy issue in PA is to “adopt a PA ethics charter that helps them to govern what they should clearly or shouldn’t do, in the same way that they have guidelines for the usage of customer or financial data.” Such an approach can unlock the value of PA while upholding high standards of ethics and privacy.