Be careful! These books can change your career: People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list

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Be careful! These books can change your career:
People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list

Let’s face it. There are too many professional books one can read in a lifespan. This list of People Analytics and HR-Tech books is not exceptional. I won’t be able to complete reading all of it, though I do have these books on my Kindle, ready for browsing. I find here inspiration, blended with practical guidance, validation for my practices, mixed with new ideas and innovative tools, but most of all, an “open door” to a professional community, which I’m happy and honored to be a part of it. So here is my People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list on Kindle, ordered chronologically, from newest to oldest. Click titles for Kindle versions (Work in progress. Last update: April 14th, 2020. Total kindle books mentioned: 32).

Nadeem Khan and Dave Millner (2020). “An understanding of people analytics is a crucial skill for all HR professionals and an integral part of every HR job. This book allows all HR professionals to get to grips with analytics, feel confident in their ability to handle employee and organizational data and use analytics to move from opinions to insights. It covers key questions: Where to find data in an organization? How to collect it and analyze it? How to use the findings to add business value? With case studies and thought leadership insights from companies who have leveraged people analytics to improve culture and employee engagement, increase performance and reduce costs, this book shows how and where HR analytics can make a tangible difference to organizations”.

Soumyasanto Sen (2020). “A crucial reading for HR practitioners and leaders about organization adaptation to changing and increasingly competitive environment. The book features case studies and covers the importance of cultural change and creating a human-centric employee experience, leveraging value propositions, and harnessing data insights and analytics to improve performance. It also explores frameworks, strategies and opportunities for wellbeing initiatives, upskilling and reskilling workforces to respond to and establishing a culture of collaboration and innovation”.

Martin Edwards and Kirsten Edwards (2019). “Organizational people-related data is an invaluable source of information from which to identify patterns to make effective business decisions. HR practitioners often lack statistical and analytical know-how. The book provides a clear, accessible framework for understanding People Analytics. It includes examples, such as employee engagement, performance, and turnover. It shows how to use the results to develop effective evidence-based HR strategies. This 2nd edition has been updated to include machine learning, biased algorithms, data protection, GDPR considerations, and a new example using survival analyses. A new appendix shows main R coding, and online resources consisting of SPSS and Excel data sets”.

Mong Shen Ng (2019). “This book teaches you R (open-source programming language), People Analytics, Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis. It is written for people with no knowledge of R, with step-by-step print-screen instructions. The book covers the full People Analytics scope (Benefits, Compensation, Culture, Diversity & Inclusion, Engagement, Leadership, Learning & Development, Personality Traits, Performance Management, Recruitment, Sales Incentives) with numerous real-world examples, and shows how R can help”.

Mike West (2019). “This book shows you how to collect data, analyze that data, and then apply your findings to create a happier and more engaged workforce: Start a people analytics project, work with qualitative data, collect data via communications, find the right tools and approach for analyzing data”.

Talya Bauer, Berrin Erdogan, David E. Caughlin and Donald M. Truxillo (2018). “The authors introduce the fundamentals of talent management with integrated coverage of data analytics and how they can be used to inform and support decisions about people in an organization. Features tied to SHRM competencies and data exercises give readers hands-on opportunities to practice the analytical and decision-making skills they need to excel in today’s job market. Engaging examples illustrate key HRM concepts and theories, which brings many traditional HRM topics concepts to life”.

Ben Eubanks (2018). “From using natural language processing to ensure job adverts are free from bias and gendered language to implementing chatbots to enhance the employee experience, AI has created a variety of opportunities for the HR function. Artificial Intelligence for HR empowers HR professionals to leverage this potential and use AI to improve efficiency and develop a talented and productive workforce”.

Nir Kaldero (2018). “Machine intelligence has had a more unprecedented impact on business than the internet, and it’s the only path to corporate survival in the future. This book dispels the myths and confusion surrounding this game-changing technology and provides practical strategies for harnessing its profitable power”.

Rachael Johnson-Murray, Lindsay McFarlane, Valerie Streets, Shonna Waters (2018). “The need for HR professionals to understand and apply data analytics is greater than ever. Today’s successful HR professionals must ask insightful questions, understand key terms, and intelligently apply data, but may lack a clear understanding of the many forms, types, applications, interpretations, and capabilities of HR analytics. HR Analytics provides a practical approach to using data to solve real HR challenges in organizations and demystifies analytics with clear guidelines and recommendations for making the business case, starting an HR analytics function, avoiding common pitfalls, presenting data through visualization and storytelling, and much more”.

Deborah Waddill (2018). “In times when HR leaders implement innovative technologies, such as Watson, AI, predictive modeling, and real-time analytics are being, this book can help. It offers the practical insights, real-world case studies, tips and tools, recommendations, and additional resources, to guide HR practitioners through each of the major technologies and to address vital strategic and implementation issues, that eventually enhance, enable, revitalize, and empower Human Resources”.

Edward E. Lawler and John W. Boudreau (2018). “the book delivers new findings of what makes HR successful and how it can add value to today’s organizations. Tracing changes in a global sample of firms, it provides an international benchmark against which to measure a company’s HR practice. HR is most powerful when it plays a strategic role, makes use of information technology, and has tangible metrics and analytics. The authors offer insights about HR’s changing role in strategy, big data, social and knowledge networks, and the gig economy”.

Michael Arena (2018). “In this book, Michael Arena, an organizational networks expert who helped enable GM’s legendary turnaround, explains how to transform a company through the concept of adaptive space: enabling creativity, innovation, and novel ideas to flow freely among teams, across departments, and throughout the company. Using GM case study and other highly adaptive organizations, Arena provides a model to follow.”

Bernard Marr (2018). “A practical guide which enables HR professionals to leverage the value of the vast amount of data available at their fingertips. Covering how to identify the most useful sources of data, collect information in a transparent way that is in line with data protection requirements and turn this data into real insights.”

Ross Sparkman (2018). “A playbook for workforce planning from beginning to end. It enables HR professionals to answer core business questions including how do I analyze future hiring demand? How do I assess what skills will be required in the future? How should I prioritize investments like training and development? How do I assess the supply of talent around the world? How do I identify the business drivers that impact workforce demand? It also covers the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), automation and machine learning on the global workforce and how to deal with these implications.”

Tracey Smith (2018). “The book aims to proactively plan to put the right people, in the right place, at the right time at the right cost in order to mitigate workforce risk. Written by the former head of global strategic workforce planning for FedEx Express, this basic introduction guides the reader through the planning framework and presents practical tools and approaches for successful implementation. It also discusses some of the major challenges of implementation facing leaders today”.

Lyndon Sundmark (2017). “The book seeks to cut through the jargon and hype that currently accompanies the current state of this field. It provides foundational definitions and concepts, a suggested ‘known’ analytics framework, and practical illustrative examples of how to make use of analytics to address HR issues. It gets you to think informationally about ‘all’ of HR, and offers examples that ‘scratch the surface’ of what is possible.”

Nigel Guenole, Jonathan Ferrar and Sheri Feinzig (2017). “Drawing on incisive case studies and vignettes, three experts help you bring purpose and clarity to any workforce analytics project, with robust research design and analysis to get reliable insights. They reveal where to start, where to find stakeholder support, and how to earn “quick wins” to build upon.”

Jenny Dearborn and David Swanson (2017). “How to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs. opinions, identify causes behind your company’s thorniest problems and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy. Realistic and actionable, this book tells the story of a successful sales executive who, after leading an analytics-driven turnaround (in Data Driven, this book’s predecessor), faces a new turnaround challenge as chief human resources officer.”

Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris (2017). “The roadmap for becoming an analytical competitor, this book shows how to create new strategies for organizations based on sophisticated analytics, introduces a five-stage model of analytical competition, and describes typical behaviors, capabilities, and challenges of each stage. It equally emphasizes human and technological resources, and contains examples from different industries and business functions”.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2017). “Bridging the gap between the psychological science of talent and common real-world talent practices, this book aims to educate HR practitioners and leaders on how to measure, predict and manage talent. It provides a data-driven solution to the common problems around employee selection, development, and engagement; how to define and evaluate talent; how to detect and inhibit toxic employee behaviors; and how to identify and harness leadership potential.”

Jean Paul Isson and Jesse S. Harriott (2016). “This book presents a practical framework for real-world talent analytics, backed by groundbreaking examples of workforce analytics in action across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Leverage predictive analytics throughout the hiring process, Utilize analytics techniques for more effective workforce management, Learn how people analytics benefits organizations of all sizes in various industries, Integrate analytics into HR practices seamlessly and thoroughly.”

Martin Edwards and Kirsten Edwards (2016). “Where other functions of an organization deal in profits, sales growth, forecasts, and strategic planning, the HR function is responsible for employee well-being, engagement, and motivation. Such concerns do not immediately conjure up images of analytical know-how, even though in reality the management of such things often requires a lot of measurement and technical skill. The book provides a clear, accessible framework with which to understand and work with HR analytics at an advanced level.”

John R. Mattox II, Mark Van Buren and Jean Martin (2016). “The book provides a framework for understanding how to work with learning analytics at an advanced level. It focuses on the questions that training evaluation is intended to answer: is training effective and how can it be improved? It discusses the field of learning analytics, outlines how and why analytics can be useful, offers examples of approaches to answering these questions and looks at the valuable role that technology has to play.”

Ramesh Soundararajan and Kuldeep Singh (2016). “HR analytics is pivotal in identifying, measuring and articulating the objectives and outcomes of different programs. Consider predicting which high performers were at risk of leaving six months before they walked out the door, or triage incoming resumes overnight to predict employee success and tenure before you hire. It is possible with sophisticated technology and analytics, as demonstrated by companies such as Google, Walmart, and American Express.”

Alec Levenson (2015). “Business people who devise the strategies and the human resources people who get employees to implement them use completely different analytics. Business analytics can determine if operational priorities aren’t being achieved but can’t explain why. HR analytics reveal potentially effective policy and process improvements but can’t identify which would have the greatest strategic impact. This book shows how to use an integrated approach to bring these two pieces together.”

Gene Pease (2015). “The author offers a framework for optimizing human capital investments through predictive analysis. You’ll learn how to transition from anecdotes and surveys to more advanced measurement techniques and combine the data from multiple systems into a unified plan of action that improves business results. The book includes practical examples and case studies to show how these techniques are applied in real-world settings, and executives and thought leaders weigh in on how advanced analytics are informing better business decisions every day.”

Laszlo Bock (2015). “A compelling manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live, Laszlo Bock, Ex. Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations offers both a philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper.”

Jack Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips (2015). “The tools and techniques you need to use analytics to show top decision makers the value of HR in your organization. Focusing on three types of analytics, descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive, the book shows how you can apply analytics by Developing relationships between variables, Predicting the success of HR programs, Determining the cost of intangibles that are otherwise difficult to value, Showing the business value of particular HR programs, Calculating and forecasting the ROI of various HR projects and programs.”

Jac Fitz-Enz and John Mattox (2014). “The book explains the basics of every business: the vision, the brand, and the culture, and shows how predictive analytics supports them. The authors put the focus on the fundamentals of predictability and include a framework of logical questions to help set up an analytic program or project, then follow up by offering a clear explanation of statistical applications.”

David Lahey (2014). “A practical guide for using analytics to finding the perfect member for a team and avoiding bad culture fits, mismatched skillsets, entitled workers, and other hiring missteps that drain the team of productivity and morale. The book provides guidance toward implementing tools to build the best teams and achieve best outcomes.”

Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett (2013). “Fundamental principles of data science necessary for extracting business value from the data you collect. The book helps to understand data-mining techniques in use today, provides examples of real-world business problems to illustrate these principles, helps to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists, and reveals how to think data-analytically.”

Ben Waber (2013). “Sensors and analytics can give you an unprecedented understanding of how your people work and collaborate, and actionable insights for building a more effective, productive, and positive organization. The book covers cutting-edge case studies, e.g., changing the way call center employees spent their breaks to increase performance by 25% while significantly reducing stress, tweaking the balance of in-person and electronic communication to enhance the value of both and many more.”

Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn (2011). “This book provides a means of understanding and changing organizational culture in order to make organizations more effective. It provides validated instruments for diagnosing organizational culture and management competency; a theoretical framework for understanding organizational culture; and a systematic strategy and methodology for changing organizational culture and personal behavior.”


 

 

About the author:

Littal Shemer Haim brings Data Science into HR activities, to guide organizations to base decision-making about people on data. Her vast experience in applied research, keen usage of statistical modeling, constant exposure to new technologies, and genuine interest in people’s lives, all led her to focus nowadays on HR Data Strategy, People Analytics, and Organizational Research.


4 Replies to "Be careful! These books can change your career: People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list"

  • comment-avatar
    Matan Gilbert
    December 16, 2018 (7:57 am)

    היי ליטל. אני מעוניין ללמוד עוד על התחום של.
    לאנשים. האם את יכולה להמליץ ​​על טקסט היכרות טוב על הנושא? מתן Analytics

    • comment-avatar
      Littal Shemer Haim
      December 16, 2018 (3:19 pm)

      Hi Matan, Considering your experience in BI and advanced analytics (Yep, I read that on your LinkedIn profile), I would recommend you learn more about Human Resources processes. To practice data science in HR, aka People Analytics, an expertise in the domain of people processes is valuable. I invite you to read more of my blog, subscribe if you want, and get the spirit of this practice. Also, pick some of the books in this list to learn how to postulate and raise business questions related to people in analytics projects.

  • comment-avatar
    Littal Shemer Haim
    June 19, 2019 (12:53 pm)

    More Books! Brilliant reading list by Paul van der Laken, sorted by Categories: Behavioural Psychology, Technology, Ethics, Digital & Data-driven HR, Management, Statistics, People analytics, Programming, and data visualization. Adding it to my summer vacation planning kit… 🙂

  • comment-avatar
    Littal Shemer Haim
    May 3, 2020 (3:43 pm)

    Springer has released 65 Machine Learning and Data books for free!
    65 books list