05 May How Global Mobility Specialists Can Use Big Data for Strategy  

Big Data, or the tons of information that stream through a company’s servers and structures every single day, is being used by global mobility specialists and human resource professionals for the recruitment of candidates, as well as the performance tracking of employees and assignees.

As explained in one of our earlier blogs, Big Data can assess to the detail the qualities and behavioral skills of a candidate, project the contribution he can make to the company, and possibly compare the return of the investment the company placed on him versus the actual value he did eventually return.

Understanding and analyzing Big Data for human resource functions has become part of a bigger service and sector called HR Technology. As described by HR Technologist, HR Tech marries the experience, knowledge, and skill of HR professionals with lighting speed.  Data-gathering and analytical abilities of smart machines that help improve the overall quality of talent in the workplace.

HR Tech can give managers a heads-up on what motivates their employees and what stress them. At the same time, it can also point out both the structural strengths and weaknesses of an organization in order to make the latter more robust.

Because HR Tech (or some aspects of it) can show the overall status of an organization, an individual, or a department, HR  managers and global mobility specialists use it along with Big Data to craft strategies that can achieve the HR objectives for the long haul.

Match talent KPI (key performance indicators) with the company’s overall business objectives

Global mobility specialists pull out all stops to make sure their assignees feel integral to the success of their company, and not just as another cog in the wheel. But oftentimes, regardless of how many times the company mission and vision are discussed in town hall meetings, assignee and employee alike feel detached or separated from the big goals that the management is pursuing.

As pointed out by Forbes, Big Data can correlate these larger, loftier objectives with the different departmental targets and then continue to filter it down to the specific tasks of each individual talent. Management will actually “see” or envision how the actions they make and the directions they take can affect the work of the rest of the people in the organization.

At the same time, they will also realize the kind of support they will need from their workforce in order to fulfill their goals. Every individual will have contributed to the success of the company, and the kind of contribution the assignee makes is no longer a guessing game.

Big Data can show global mobility specialists the trends of relocation and the reasons behind them

For example, Urban Bound’s latest research shows that the following aspects can hinder or help your global recruitment efforts: change within your own organization, the increase or decrease of the assignee market, or the surplus or shortage of talent. Big Data can further narrow these criteria into specific data; for example, it can forecast that it in the next two years, acquisitions made by your company and the new offices it will establish in Northern California will create more job opportunities in tech, finance, and health care. However, the current amount of graduates and skilled workers in said areas may not be enough to fill your need. As such, your strategy should be crafted toward drawing more skilled workers in these fields into welcoming job opportunities in San Francisco, San Jose, and other nearby cities.

Finally, as Davidson Morris says it, you can use Big Data to plot how your organization will change in the next few years as it responds to the challenges of the times. You will also have to anticipate the kind of work and occupations that you will have to retain, the ones that you might have to transform, and the others that you would have to discard.

This will also help you strategize how to make your workforce more competitive, which includes knowing the new skills that your employees and assignees will have to be trained in, as well as the amount of new specialized hires you would have to recruit, and from which city or country to recruit talents in those fields of discipline.