Human capital is one of the least measured and analyzed investments, despite the fact that more than 70% of company costs are labor related. In recent times, Executives are realizing that they do not have a firm grasp on the characteristics and capabilities of their workforce. Hence, investors are asking for ‘human capital’ statements to be included as part of annual reports because human capital drives the performance of all other assets.

If HR wants to play a strategic role in organizations, it needs to develop its ability to measure how human capital decisions affect the business, and vice versa. There are hundreds of metrics in use by HR today, ranging from the most basic (employee turnover) to highly complex scorecards and workforce analytics.

However, as HR evolves beyond transactional functions like making sure staff is paid on time and enrolling people in health benefits, they are thinking more and more about being viewed as a business partner. Today, HR organizations are expected to deliver services and results that fuel a company’s success. To operate in this way requires establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between what HR does and business outcomes. To create strategies based on that information requires the right data. This is where the value of HR analytics is most pertinent.

Senior managers are looking for meaningful measures of human capital factors and their impact on business outcomes and HR analytics can be used to track and manage their performance and to drive decisions in the HR function.

The integration of HR metrics with other business metrics from within, as well as outside of the organization, aids to understand the complex factors which affect the current workforce and make predictive decisions about the future workforce.

This is the overall aim of this course, as well as to assist HR Professionals in managing employees effectively, so that organizational goals can be met.