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Quentin Hardy reports at the NYT that a leading maker of cloud-based software for running corporate human resources and financial operations has announced new products that provide the kind of data analysis that Netflix uses to recommend movies, LinkedIn has to suggest people you might know, or Facebook needs to put a likely ad in front of you. One version of the software, called Insight Applications, predicts which high-performing employees are likely to leave a company in the next year; it then offers possible actions (more money, new job) that might make them stay. "We’re surprised how accurately we can predict someone will leave a job," says Mohammad Sabah, director of data science at Workday. The goal is to predict future business outcomes to take advantage of opportunities and cut risk levels. One future product may be the ability to predict who will and won’t make their sales quotas, and suggest who should be hired to improve the outcome. "Making an employee happy, improving the efficiency of a company these are hard problems that affect corporations."
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:13AM
[sarcasm]With suggestions like "possible actions (more money, new job)", we know these models and the responses to these models will be accurate. The current abilities of companies to sift through resumes to find proper candidates is outstanding and in no way causes me concern. I fully trust management to figure out when I want to leave and not to immediately over-react by having security escorting me out the door with a half eaten bagel.[/sarcasm]
(For those wondering: at one of my previous companies, they took an entire day to lay off a whole bunch of people for a downsize. They used security to flank them on either side as they surrounded and escorted the unsuspecting victims out the buildings. I wasn't one of the 7% taken, but I knew a lot of people who were and it was humiliating. They couldn't even gather their personal items. Their personal items would be given to them on a future day away from the main building. I saw half eaten breakfast bagels left on the desk many hours after they were kicked out. Security clearances weren't even needed to work there.)
My prediction? When people want to leave a job, the smart ones will start putting out anonymous resumes and anonymous profiles not directly connected to their main profile. And businesses will start looking more heavily at these. Since it will be anonymous, people will begin to lie even more on their resumes than they do now. What a crazy world we live in.
Yo! Businesses! I have a better suggestion than looking at big data: learn to manage people better. People won't want to leave if their boss is a good manager and the business is a half way decent place to work at. Focus on that and you'll have a fantastic team. Can't figure out how to manage better? Here's the best suggestion: Listen to your co-workers. (Not your "underlings". Not your "employees". The proper word is "co-workers".) They have good ideas. And don't ask them to write those ideas down on paper when we all know it goes into the round file! Listen to them. Have a good discussion with them and follow up on those discussions. Thank them for the input. Let them see you making a better place to work based on their input. You build trust that way.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Sunday November 09 2014, @05:54AM
Indeed, much good advice there. I was in upper management (Dir. of IT) and during a management meeting a woman who ran the Customer Service department referred to her team as "worker bees". I had a very vocal and strong discussion with her right then and there. I had to explain that those people were *people* not bees and deserved respect. Took a good chunk of time out of the management meeting. They were trying to cut costs by eliminating breaks for hourly workers (illegal), find ways to get them to work longer without pay (illegal), etc. And nobody, not even the president even considered for a second that all that stuff was just plain wrong.
I always treated my co-workers with respect, made sure there was no overtime (they were salaried) and generally went out of my way to make sure their careers were meaningful for them. I had one rule: If you tell me you can do something in a certain time, and you find out you can't, then all you have to do is come to me as soon as you see you're in trouble. It was my job to see that the job being done had the proper resources, or perhaps more specific training was needed or whatever else might be needed to meet our goals. It was my problem to figure out how to make it work out as that was *my* job.
I never fired anyone who followed that advice. Now the ones who said yes, all was well and on track only to find out they were 30% complete on deadline day, and never let me help them. They were shown the door.