If your company is struggling with employee performance and output and you’re looking for ways to improve that, then big data analytics should be part of your future plans. Not only does big data allow companies to gather, and analyze large amounts of data, but with data analytics tools like Presto as a service, companies of any size can now analyze data in real-time.
How exactly can big data help your company with employee performance?
Avoid outsourcing
Often companies outsource without really understanding why they are doing it, besides the fact they think it will be cheaper, and they often do it without looking for better alternatives. With real-time analytics, companies can have a better vision of what is really going on in the company and often times can avoid outsourcing entirely. These types of analytics allow executives and managers to pinpoint areas of concern at an unprecedented speed.
Big data analytics allows these managers to not only analyze with their eyes and what they see, but it also allows them to make judgements with what the information tells them. Often times it’s hard to really pinpoint how effective an employee is beyond what a manager sees them doing when he or she interacts with them. And that interaction in a large company can be a pretty rare thing.
Many times too, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. If you outsource without really understanding the problem, the problem isn’t going to magically fix itself. Even if the company moves out of country that problem is still going to exist. By analyzing in real-time, companies can understand what the real problem is and then decide whether or not outsourcing is really the answer or not.
Increased Effectiveness
As we mentioned, it’s hard to pinpoint with human observation how effective an employee really is. There needs to be some sort of metric and some device to measure it. In some fields that’s doable already, but in others that’s not. By implementing big data, companies can better monitor what their employees are doing and how effective they really are. From that information, they can implement new techniques that increase effectiveness. They can take the necessary action steps with individuals who are struggling with performance, and they can properly reward those employees who are succeeding.
Not only does this bring more fairness to the work environment, but it also gives management a better vision of what can be improved in the employee tasks and what things are already successful. One company recently reported that by using big data analytics to boost employee performance they’ve increased output by 40% without outsourcing any jobs and they’ve actually had to hire new employees. By doing the job better and quicker they are getting more clients and need to hire more employees.
Traditionally this kind of big data implementation has been very costly — millions of dollars at least. That, for many companies, especially startups and small business, is impossible to put forward. However, with Presto and big data in the cloud most companies can now afford to implement this kind of technology into their everyday work environment. Not only is it affordable, but the difference that it makes in employee performance and overall effectiveness, means that it pays for itself in a short amount of time.
Big data is the future for companies in so many different ways. Boosting employee performance and avoiding outsourcing are just two of those ways. Management needs to be aware too, though, that it needs to be careful in how it uses these kinds of tools so as not to manipulate or alienate it’s work force. If not used in the right way, these tools could create more problems than they fix.
Gil Allouche is the Vice President of Marketing at Qubole. Gil began his marketing career as a product strategist at SAP while earning his MBA at Babson College and is a former software engineer.
