Human resources in an enriched environment of business intelligence

Abstract

Purpose

While many organizations are starting to use business intelligence (BI) in many areas of their businesses and make substantial gains, they have taken little advantage of this in the human resources (HR) management area. The purpose of this paper is to advance BI and data analytics technologies as precursors to the design of HR management protocols and database strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper discusses the fact that the increasing prevalence of globalization is driven by a number of factors including growing consumers in developing countries, technological progress, and worldwide workforce diversity. HR departments of global companies must implement BI techniques and assemble global databases that obtain information such as employee's attrition and hiring, compensation and benefits, ethnic, gender, cultural, and nationality distributions. By applying advanced analytical techniques on the global database, human resources professionals will acquire intelligent business insight, predict changes and make informed decisions at operational and strategic levels.

Findings

The business environment is constantly evolving into a more complex system and with global competition, decision making in organizations has become increasingly intricate and convoluted. This creates challenges for global organizations' HR departments to manage a workforce diverse in cultures, time zones, expertise, benefits and compensations.

Practical implications

Only those multinational enterprises willing to adapt their human resource practices to the changing global labor market conditions will be able to attract and retain high performing employees. BI and data analytics can aid in making informed decisions based on knowledge extracted from the data and options at hand. Organizations that have successfully implemented BI are able to make decisions quickly and with more accuracy. They have better and faster access to the key activities and processes that the organizations and its functional departments must pursue to meet their goals and objectives.

Originality/value

The paper tackles one of the most critical problems of educating multinational enterprises to adapt their HR practices to the changing global labor market conditions. By incorporating BI and data analytics in the design of HRM protocols and database strategies they can attract, develop and retain high performing employees and succeed in the global business competition.

Citation

Kapoor, B. and Sherif, J. (2012), "Human resources in an enriched environment of business intelligence", Kybernetes, Vol. 41 No. 10, pp. 1625-1637. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921211276792