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

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 link between networking behaviours and work outcomes: the role of political skills

PurposeNetworking behaviours are important for a range of work outcomes. Little empirical evidence of how internal vs external networking behaviours influence job commitment and job performance exists and whether political skills moderate these relationships. Using theories of social capital and personal initiative, this study examines the effect of internal and external networking behaviours on job commitment and job performance in the context of political skills.Design/methodology/approachBased on a sequential mixed-method research design with a four-month time lag, Study 1 data on networking behaviours, political skills and work outcomes were collected via a survey of middle managers and their supervisors from ten private sector organisations operating in Sri Lanka. Study 2 data were collected via interviews of a set of middle managers and their supervisors.FindingsStudy 1 findings indicate a positive relationship between internal networking behaviours and both job commitment and job performance. The authors also found a moderating effect of political skills on internal networking behaviours and job commitment. Study 2 findings explained, strengthened and extended results of Study 1.Practical implicationsMiddle managers can use these research findings to understand how internal networking behaviours improve their job commitment and job performance. These managers can use their political skills and internal networking behaviours to improve their job commitment. They can also advance their career through improved job commitment and job performance. Senior managers and human resource managers should facilitate and encourage internal networking behaviours. Training and development managers should develop middle managers' networking behaviours and political skills.Originality/valueThis study provides pioneering evidence of how internal networking behaviours impact middle managers' job performance and job commitment, and how internal networking behaviours improve job commitment for middle managers with high political skills.

How job resources influence employee productivity and technology-enabled performance in financial services: the job demands–resources model perspective

PurposeThis study aims to provide insight into the relationship between job resources (job control and possibilities for development at work) and employee performance, measured as employee productivity and technology-enabled performance, by examining the role of employee well-being (work engagement and emotional exhaustion).Design/methodology/approachThe data comprised two overlapping data sets collected from a large financial institution; Study 1 employed survey data (N = 636), whereas study 2 employed register data on job performance collected over a one-year period combined with survey data (N = 143). The data were analysed through structural equation modelling.FindingsStudy 1 indicated that job resources were positively associated with technology-enabled performance more strongly through work engagement than emotional exhaustion. Study 2 revealed that emotional exhaustion was associated with lower employee productivity, whereas work engagement was not. Furthermore, the results indicated that job control was related to higher productivity through a lower level of emotional exhaustion.Practical implicationsThe study's findings point to the importance of developing interventions that decrease emotional exhaustion.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to measure employee productivity longitudinally as a ratio of inputs (working time) to outputs (relevant job outcomes) over one year. This study contributes to the job demands–resources model (JD-R) literature by showing the importance of job control in fostering both employee productivity and more positive perceptions of technology.

Choosing the right (HR) metrics: digital data for capturing team proactivity and determinants of content validity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how positive organizational behaviors, specifically team proactivity, can be captured through digital data and what determines content validity of these data. The aim is to enable scientifically rigorous HR analytics projects for measuring and managing organizational behavior.Design/methodology/approachResults are derived from interview data (N = 24) with team members, HR professionals and consultants of HR software.FindingsBased on inductive qualitative content analysis, the authors clustered six data types generated/recorded by 13 different technological applications that were proposed to be informative of team proactivity. Four determinants of content validity were derived.Practical implicationsThe overview of technological applications and resulting data types can stimulate diverse HR analytics projects, which can contribute to organizational performance. The authors suggest ways to control for the threats to content validity in the design of HR analytics or research projects.Originality/valueHR analytics projects in the application field of managing organizational behavior are rare. This paper provides starting points for choosing data to measure team proactivity as one form of organizational behavior and guidelines for ensuring their validity.

Let's work together, especially in the pandemic: finding ways to encourage problem-focused voice behavior among passionate employees

PurposeThis study seeks to unravel the relationship between employees' passion for work and their engagement in problem-focused voice behavior by identifying a mediating role of their efforts to promote work-related goal congruence and a moderating role of their perceptions of pandemic threats to the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe research hypotheses were tested with quantitative data collected through a survey instrument administered among 158 employees in a large Portuguese-based organization that operates in the food sector, in the midst of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The Process macro was applied to assess the moderated mediation dynamic that underpins the proposed theoretical framework.FindingsEmployees' positive work-related energy enhances their propensity to speak up about organizational failures because they seek to find common ground with their colleagues with respect to the organization's goals and future. The mediating role of such congruence-promoting efforts is particularly prominent to the extent that employees dwell on the threats that a pandemic holds for their organization.Practical implicationsThe study pinpoints how HR managers can leverage a negative situation—employees who cannot keep the harmful organizational impact of a life-threatening virus out of their minds—into productive outcomes, by channeling positive work energy, derived from their passion for work, toward activities that bring organizational problems into the open.Originality/valueThis study adds to HR management research by unveiling how employees' attempts to gather their coworkers around a shared work-related mindset can explain how their passion might spur reports of problem areas, as well as explicating how perceived pandemic-related threats activate this process.

Interpersonal leadership and job engagement: testing the mediating role of deep acting, initiative climate and learning goal orientation

PurposeThough employee job engagement has been one of the few most proliferated organizational concepts during the last two decades, evidence on how to achieve an engaged workforce is unclear. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the engagement literature by investigating the role of interpersonal leadership in developing job engagement through the relative importance of deep acting emotional labor skills, initiative climate and learning goal orientation as intervening mechanisms.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed an online self-reported survey in data collection, gathering input from 438 frontline service employees in Malaysia. The data was then tested using the structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the proposed parallel mediation model of the study.FindingsThe findings demonstrated that deep acting emotional labor skills, initiative climate and learning goal orientation were significantly effective in intervening mechanisms through which interpersonal leadership impacted job engagement.Practical implicationsThis study offers insightful evidence that can be utilized by service organizations to improve employees' job engagement. The evidence derived from this study suggests that interpersonal leadership is a valuable organizational resource that can help carve pathways through which the objective of employee job engagement can be achieved. Therefore, while crafting organizational interventions for employee job engagement, service managers should address the findings of this study.Originality/valueDespite the evidence presented in previous literature on the notable relationship between leadership and engagement, there is yet to be an apt understanding of the impact of new leadership perspectives and the intervening mechanisms in predicting job engagement. This study attempts to fill the research gap.

Reverse mentoring and job crafting as resources for health: a work engagement mediation model

PurposeThis paper examines whether employee-driven practices of reverse mentoring and job crafting lead to work engagement and, in turn, to higher levels of prospective mental and physical health.Design/methodology/approachIntegrating social exchange theory and the job demands and resources model as theoretical frameworks, survey data were collected from 369 Indian software developers to test the research model. Latent variable structural equation modeling was used to empirically test the hypothesized associations.FindingsThe findings reveal that both reverse mentoring and job crafting are significantly associated with work engagement. Work engagement fully mediated the negative relationship between 1) reverse mentoring and mental ill-health and 2) job crafting and physical ill-health, while it partially mediated the negative relationship between 1) reverse mentoring and physical ill-health and 2) job crafting and mental ill-health.Practical implicationsThe results demonstrate that by implementing the practices of reverse mentoring and job crafting, managers can achieve desired levels of engagement among employees and sustain organizational productivity by promoting employee health and well-being.Originality/valueThis study is one of the early attempts to empirically demonstrate the associated health outcomes of reverse mentoring and job crafting.

Fading away at work: “I could have left without saying anything” – performing talent management in a multinational organization

PurposeThis study was undertaken in order to show how talent management (TM) was performed in practice in a multinational organization as well as how the TM practices affected both different groups of workers and the perception of talent within the organization.Design/methodology/approachPerforming talent management was reassessed in the relationship between TM practices, view and identification of talent, attributed positioning and self-positioning of older and younger workers; retrieved from an exploratory single case study in a multinational organization, based on interviews.FindingsThe findings illustrate that despite the struggling to fill key positions with skilled workers, the studied organization adopted approaches to TM that excluded older workers' talent. First, central to performing TM was how talent was viewed and identified, and second, two types of positioning acts were important: the organizations (re)producing of talent management through attributive positioning acts on older/younger workers and older workers' self-positioning of their own talent. The two sides of performing talent management were complex and intertwined resulting in an age-based devaluation of talent at work.Practical implicationsThe study points to important issues in designing and performing TM that may be useful to HR and managers as a point of departure in the development of more inclusive approaches to TM.Originality/valueThe concept “performing talent management” was developed as an intertwined relationship between on-going positioning acts and (re)production of status, talent and age at work; recognizing preferences of what was viewed and identified as valued talent as main drivers made it possible to develop an understanding of exclusion and inclusion mechanisms in performing TM.

Social capital, language and host country nationals (HCNs) as global talent

PurposeIn expatriate-reliant countries, the challenge of attracting and retaining overseas talent remains, despite the COVID-19 global pandemic restricting international travel. Expatriates depend on formal organizational and host country national (HCN) support to facilitate their adjustment when moving abroad. To date, there has been a limited focus on the centrality of language in spanning boundaries between HCNs and expatriates that enables bridges to be formed. This study explored how language influences the social capital accrual and the support received by expatriates from HCNs.Design/methodology/approachRooted in social constructionism, the authors used semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 20 Nigerian HCNs from two Italian organizations in the construction industry.FindingsThe findings highlight how language is key to effective social capital bridging and show how HCNs act as boundary spanners between local talent and expatriates on assignment. In this study, HCNs have superior language skills and can thus fill the semantic void in communication between the two parties. It emerged that expatriates receive more significant support and higher levels of social capital accrual than HCNs from this relationship.Practical implicationsConsideration should be given to providing formal language training to both expatriates and HCNs. Embedding networking relationships, such as buddying schemes or reverse mentoring, would enhance the social capital of both parties and improve performance. In addition, global talent management policies should be adjusted to provide definitive career paths and clearer promotion criteria for HCNs.Originality/valueThe authors find that through their language ability, HCNs may have more power over expatriates than previously considered, repositioning their status from a talent perspective. The authors argue that expatriates should not be considered by organizations the only source of global talent in such a context, and that organizations need to offer more definitive talent policies and support that accounts for both expatriates and HCNs.

The role of talent intermediaries in accessing and developing refugee talent pools

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the role talent intermediaries can play in supporting the access and development of talent from forcibly displaced backgrounds.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on a single case study design of UK charitable organisation, the Council for At-Risk Academics, to consider the global talent management of academics in exile.FindingsThis paper finds that specialised intermediaries can facilitate access to and the successful performance (individual and organisational) of refugee talent. Findings reveal a major shift in talent recruitment processes that are required in order for refugees to take up international work opportunities and highlight the importance of viewing individual potential, organisational support and opportunity access as a precursor for talent development and impact.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that profession-specific intermediary support that fosters cross-sector partnerships, better addresses the talent development and workforce integration challenges of refugees.Originality/valueApplication of a multi-level relational framework shows the reasons for, and reality of forced displacement for academics in exile. Focusing on the academic sector demonstrates the importance of protecting both individuals and values at the heart of professions subject to persecution during war and unrest. In highlighting how refugee talent intermediaries can support individuals to breach the canvas ceiling and facilitate the global mobility of refugee talent, a contribution is made to existing debates in diversity, global talent management and migration studies.