Promise versus reality: a systematic review of the ongoing debates in people analytics

Abstract

PurposeAccording to the significant growth of literature and continued adoption of people analytics in practice, it has been promised that people analytics will inform evidence-based decision-making and improve business outcomes. However, existing people analytics literature remains underdeveloped in understanding whether and how such promises have been realized. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the current reality of people analytics and uncover the debates and challenges that are emerging as a result of its adoption.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducts a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles focused on people analytics published in the Association of Business School (ABS) ranked journals between 2011 and 2021.FindingsThe review illustrates and critically evaluates several emerging debates and issues faced by people analytics, including inconsistency among the concept and definition of people analytics, people analytics ownership, ethical and privacy concerns of using people analytics, missing evidence of people analytics impact and readiness to perform people analytics.Practical implicationsThis review presents a comprehensive research agenda demonstrating the need for collaboration between scholars and practitioners to successfully align the promise and the current reality of people analytics.Originality/valueThis systematic review is distinct from existing reviews in three ways. First, this review synthesizes and critically evaluates the significant growth of peer-reviewed articles focused on people analytics published in ABS ranked journals between 2011 and 2021. Second, the study adopts a thematic analysis and coding process to identify the emerging themes in the existing people analytics literature, ensuring the comprehensiveness of the review. Third, this study focused and expanded upon the debates and issues evolving within the emerging field of people analytics and offers an updated agenda for the future of people analytics research.

The duality of HR analysts' storytelling: Showcasing and curbing

“…A temporal explanation for policy‐practice decoupling in the organisations where our participants work seems plausible. A lag exists between reaching the ideal‐type mature HR analytics lauded in the literature on the one hand (Margherita, 2022; McCartney & Fu, 2022b), and the current state of data, systems and privacy concerns on the other (Guenole et al., 2017; McCartney & Fu, 2022b). Such lag suggests that HR analysts need to both advocate for and sell HR analytics policy ‐ towards the outside world and also towards internal audiences.…”

Exploring the Evolution of Human Resource Analytics: A Bibliometric Study

“…It could be asserted that consolidation is made of the greater use of term “HR analytics” with respect to other related key terms used in publications on the same subject. Among the authors, it is notable that Steven McCartney together with Na Fu relate to most of the main HR analytics topics, with both of these authors having published very recent articles in HR analytics [ 44 ] and People analytics [ 17 ].…”

“…The authors of [ 17 ] propose the balance of interest approach to explore the theoretical perspective at the individual, team, and organisational level, in order to further extend HR analytics research, which has necessarily concentrated on the application of HR analytics, reinforcing the premise that empirical work iscarried out to demonstrate the theoretical relationship, the antecedents of HR analytics and the general performance of the organisation.…”

A critical review of HR analytics: visualization and bibliometric analysis approach

“…Moreover, the question regarding the successful execution of HR analytics within establishments remains unanswered (Qamar and Samad, 2021;Arora et al, 2022b). Previous literature has identified many barriers to the adoption of HR analytics, including a lack of analytical skills among HR professionals, challenges concerning technology integration and low-quality data (McCartney and Fu, 2022;Dahlbom et al, 2020;Arora et al, 2022a) Nevertheless, human resource analytics is still at its nascent stage (Fernandez and Gallardo-Gallardo, 2021;Falletta and Combs, 2021;Arora et al, 2022b), and there is substantial growth in practicing HR analytics despite the lack of adoption of this technology (Dahlbom et al, 2020). Slowly and gradually establishments have started discussing the implementation of HR analytics to formulate strategic people-related decisions (Schiemann et al, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, the question regarding the successful execution of HR analytics within establishments remains unanswered (Qamar and Samad, 2021; Arora et al , 2022b). Previous literature has identified many barriers to the adoption of HR analytics, including a lack of analytical skills among HR professionals, challenges concerning technology integration and low-quality data (McCartney and Fu, 2022; Dahlbom et al , 2020; Arora et al , 2022a)…”