People analytics: will graph technology revolutionise HR?
It’s been used by social media networks, the space programme and for Covid contact tracing, but is graph technology useful for HR departments? Given that it’s designed to track relationships – and HR is all about relationships between people – the answer is clear
Source | www.hrzone.com | Amy Hodler
People analytics is the fastest-growing sub-domain of the HR profession, according to HR analyst Josh Bersin. In his latest annual report on HR technology, he says 25% of companies are hiring into this role.
Bersin said: “In today’s businesses, people have jobs and job descriptions, but these don’t typically reflect the work that is actually done. More and more of the focus today is on role and project, which leads to the need to look at someone’s real business capabilities, not just their job title, level, or experience… every individual in the company is no longer a node on the hierarchy. We are each nodes in a network, connected to many other people, projects, information, and history”.
Graph-based models can analyse large volumes of interconnected data and uncover hidden connections. Graph databases model complex networks of nodes, entities, and their interrelationships, making graph technology ideal for HR carrying out organisational people analytics. Graph technology helps organisations get a clear view of all the relationships and roles within the workforce.
“[Graph databases] are vastly more powerful for modeling how people work in networks, how people search for data and objects, how people communicate and build different types of relationships (peers, team-mates, bosses, subordinates),” added Bersin. “These products essentially store this information into a graph of the company, which can evolve over time”.
Graph technology use cases
Eighteenth century mathematician Leonhard Euler first came up with graph theory. Graph technology hit the headlines when The Panama Papers used the technology to expose financial wrongdoing, exposing the connections public officials and executives had tried to keep hidden. Graph technology today is used in many scenarios including search engines, GPS navigation, to power social media, and for contact tracing applications.
