Big Data Definition
If you’ve read, seen, or listened to the news, you’ve probably heard the term Big Data used in several (sometimes scary) contexts. But Big Data in HR is much more than a buzz word and needn’t be feared. When embraced, it’s a powerful tool companies can leverage to gain greater insight into their organization, achieve a strategic advantage over their competition, and improve the performance of their employees and their business.
In its most common form, Big Data refers to the wealth of information amassed over time about a given data set. In HR, the data is usually composed of non-identifying information that, if analyzed correctly, can yield myriad actionable results. The latter part—proper analysis—is imperative, for using Big Data in HR. To truly benefit from all this accumulated data, organizations must know how to make sense of the valuable details to which they have access.
But Big Data is called so for good reason—manually mining such large quantities of complex information is a virtually impossible task. Thus, many organizations adopt comprehensive technology to assist in analyzing and acting upon their collected data.