The purpose of this paper is to discuss the opportunities talent analytics offers HR practitioners. As the availability of methodologies for the analysis of large volumes of data has substantially improved over the last ten years, talent analytics has started to be used by organizations to manage their workforce. This paper discusses the benefits and costs associated with the use of talent analytics within an organization as well as to highlight the differences between talent analytics and other sub-fields of business analytics. It will discuss a number of case studies on how talent analytics can improve organizational decision-making. From the case studies, we will identify key channels through which the adoption of talent analytics can improve the performance of the HR function and eventually of the whole organization. While discussing the opportunities that talent analytics offer organizations, this paper highlights the costs (in terms of data governance and ethics) that the widespread use of talent analytics can generate. Finally, it highlights the importance of trust in supporting the successful implementation of talent analytics projects.

Robert V. Kozinets and Manuela Nocker explain how data can be collected using online ethnography or netnography—unconventional in organizational research. A netnography is a specific set of related data collection, analysis, ethical, and research practices. The approach has been used to study online collaboration, and the conversations, languages, online behaviours, and symbolic repertoires of different groups. Online netnography is distinct from traditional in-person ethnography. Ethnography focuses on single field sites; netnography addresses the dispersed nature of online sociality. Prolonged field immersion is less meaningful in netnographic investigations. And the pace of internet technology development encourages a pace of research faster than that of traditional ethnography. As our social and corporate worlds become intertwined, widening access to personal information, ownership of that information is contentious, raising research ethics dilemmas. Ethnography and netnography are not value-neutral, and technology is encouraging us to question what we wish to achieve with our research.

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