Applied HR (People-) Analytics Certificate Course

How people are hired, who gets promoted, who gets the new job, who gets a raise, all those decisions are being made all the time in your company was traditionally being based on gut feeling. But in today's age, leaders prefer to make data-driven decisions - instead of solely relying on gut or their personal experience.

As a HR Analyst, you will be collecting, cleaning and making sense of the data you have about your people and putting it in a form it can be used for business decisions. We live in a talent constrained economy, so there's a huge demand for information about what is creating engagement, why are people leaving, what we can do to improve productivity, and so forth.

WHY BUSINESSES WANT TO HIRE HR ANALYTICS SKILLS?

1. Allows for data-driven decision making 88%

2. Drive/improve business performance 76%

3. Improve current programs and processes 71%

4. Solve important business problems 59%

5. Enhance respect for human resources 53%

6. Build productive executive relationships 24%

7. Increase funding for human capital 12%

WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST IN LEARNING HR ANALYTICS SKILLS?

Demand is high - but there is shortage of people who has the skill.

WHY THIS COURSE?

Developed with strong engagement from employers and HR analytics professionals, this innovative course provides you with an ability to identify people related business problems, and understand how analytics can be applied to develop solutions for these problems. Based on the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) model, the course prepares you for a future of data driven and evidence-based decision making.

The teaching approach is non-technical with learning through doing; focused on teaching you to be able to understand and apply statistics and data science to solve problems and draw causal inferences in an organisational context. The instructor of this course has been teaching analytics for post-graduate students of business analytics and human resource management at a UK-based University. So the instructor has the knowledge of what is required for the HR-Analyst role and where the beginning students get frequently stuck - and that gets reflected throughout the course. 

WHAT THIS COURSE IS NOT?

You will study how statistics and data science can be applied in HR. This course, however, shall neither cover the theory and practice of strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) nor theory of statistics because we believe in real-world practice of HR Analytics - you do not need a theoretical understanding of statistics. In short: Whatever you need to get started as a HR Analyst is there in the course. Things which you don't need (or are rather optional) are not there. That being said, there is no harm in learning the concepts of statistics in-depth. Knowledge is power after all: more the merrier. However, it is very important for you to have an in-depth understanding of the business or organisation and basics of HRM theory from academic books.

This is not the best possible course - and neither it can replace the rigours of an University education. The objective of this course is to help you get started.

WHAT HR-ANALYTICS CAN'T DO?

Remember: HR-ANALYTICS is a tool and no tool will give you quality data or make good decisions for you. That is still on you. So before you rush out and make your company invest in an analytics project - make sure you've worked with the IT department and your own internal team to validate the quality of the data you have and you have a good data dictionary so that you know what it means. All of those issues of quality and data definition are still on you. The tools will help you manipulate and visualize and understand the data. But taking care of the data quality and making decisions based on that is still your wisdom.

Be transparent with their employees about what data they're collecting and what they're going to do with it and what they're not going to do with it. And those are rules that you have to create and live by and hold yourself accountable.

Be Ethical. Consider issues related to the Privacy, Security, Fairness, and Purpose of the data and the analytics project.

Setting the expectations right:

1. You do not need to be good at maths or statistics or coding - although having a knowledge is an advantage. However, this course is meant assuming that the students do not have any background in advanced statistics and maths. We will cover few concepts in the most easiest way possible - as we go along. Plus we will be using drag-and-drop software to learn analytics - so coding experiences or knowledge is not required either. 

2. Contrary to the popular belief, analytics is not a magic-solution for answering all business questions.

3. Your organisation might not have the data you need to address its' business questions. You might require to collect the data all by yourself (e.g. by conducting surveys on employees).

4. People Analytics is new. Some stakeholders might not understand or appreciate what you do.

5. Make sure you do not breach the code of ethics. In other words, your data-processing and handling practises should be compliant with country-/organisation-specific data privacy regulatory bodies like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR for European Union). If unsure of the compliances for your region or organisation, cross-check this with your manager, local librarian, university, legal advisor, and similar reliable sources. 

6. This course is a technical course with the aim to increase your Analytics acumen, but alone it will not lead to success. Business acumen— and an understanding of how to leverage people to drive improved outcomes is vital for success - but beyond the scope of this course. Students should refer to soft skill development courses for that.

7. While HR analytics is a promising field, there are certain barriers you might need to tackle at the work place:

   Data-collection issues

   Data-integration issues

   Lack of skills

   Lack of management support

   Lack of funding

   No systematic process