No more war (for talent): the impact of HR analytics on talent management activities
Abstract
Purpose
Despite talent management’s (TM) importance for improving organizations' competitiveness and resilience, the pandemic highlighted the weakness of organizational-level TM strategies. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the moderating impact of HR analytics on the relationship between TM and its individual outcomes (talent motivation and quality of hires) and subsequently, their impact on organizational outcomes (talent retention).
Design/methodology/approach
The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to analyze 219 online questionnaires administered to HR managers from European companies.
Findings
A positive relationship exists between TM activities and talent motivation as well as the quality of hires. Furthermore, HR analytics positively moderates these relationships. Finally, talent motivation and the quality of hires are positively related to talent retention.
Research limitations/implications
This study offers several contributions to theory, as it analyzes TM from an individual perspective and provides further empirical confirmation of the potential benefits of HR analytics and additional grounding to the contingency theory.
Practical implications
Our results will allow practitioners to better orient their HR investments, with positive effects for their organizations and their employees.
Social implications
This study demonstrates that HR analytics can help organizations adopt a human-centric approach to TM, thus increasing the chances for talents to fully express their potential.
Originality/value
This study takes a step forward toward considering TM outcomes from an individual perspective, responding to new generations' need to pay more attention to their individualities. HR analytics can be a suitable tool to do so, as it can provide insights and suggestions based on the actual organizational context, making TM a more data-driven process.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Alberto Ferraris and Christian Di Prima would like to acknowledge that part of this work has been supported by the Italian Minister of University and Research (MUR) through the project “GRIS–Growing Resilient Italian SMEs” (No. 2022X9YPZJ) within the PRIN 2022 program.
A preliminary version of this study has been accepted and presented at the 15th Annual Conference of the Euromed Academy of Business, which took place from the 21st to the 23rd of September 2022. The authors want to thank all peers and reviewers for their constructive feedback and comments.
A generative AI tool has been used to re-elaborate parts of the literature review and hypotheses section.
Citation
Di Prima, C., Hussain, W.M.H.W. and Ferraris, A. (2024), "No more war (for talent): the impact of HR analytics on talent management activities", Management Decision, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-07-2023-1198
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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