Senior Round Table: “Big Data: HR Analytics”

Featured Speakers

Phillip Leslie
Associate Professor
UCLA Anderson School of Management

Ian Larkin
Visiting Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School & UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management

Rob Witoff
Data Scientist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Summary:

How data analytics is being applied to human resources. We first review the data analytics landscape—what are the different kinds of analytics being utilized, what kinds of expertise is needed, and how are organizations changing to become more data-driven in the decision making process? Then we focus on HR data analytics in particular—the use of data analytics in recruiting, performance evaluation, compensation analysis, and measuring as well enhancing employee engagement (e.g., shared dashboards with all employees). Specific examples of HR data analytics being developed at NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) will be presented to highlight the use of structured and novel data sources, data visualization, and to demonstrate the kinds of insights that data analytics can provide for HR leaders. With help from the audience, we will also discuss the organizational challenges to HR data analytics, and perhaps the most difficult challenge of all: how to translate insights to actions in an HR context.

Phillip Leslie, Associate Professor of Strategy at the Anderson School, conducted a session on translating strategy into action to enhance value and organizational performance as well as discuss the implications for capabilities that are needed for managers and leaders to be effective. Among the concepts and capabilities to be discussed are: strategic thinking, strategy translating and sense making, middle managers as empowered visionaries, and transforming organizational capabilities to exploit big data. Our interactive discussions will include a Strategic Leadership exercise and a Data Driven Management Round Table Discussion.

Ian Larkin is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Strategy group at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He researches the optimal use of formal rewards systems by companies, given the complex and often unanticipated effects these systems have on employee motivation and decision making. His research quantifying the cost incurred by a major enterprise software vendor due to salespeople deliberately gaming their sales commission system, published in The Journal of Labor Economics, is one of the most prominently cited empirical studies of incentive system gaming. It was the basis for a case study widely used in MBA classes on compensation and human resource management.

Rob is the IT Data Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his team is enabling NASA to explore data in novel ways. Before JPL, he founded the venture backed startup, Apigy. He has since lead development for interplanetary data visualization software and developed a laser communication system on the International Space Station with the OPALS project. Rob is NASA’s first IT Data Scientist and his data science team incubates solutions to Big Data problems for spacebound explorers, earthborn assets and the people that make them possible.

Event Materials (members only)