Dive Brief:

• Knowing what drives performance, how people learn and what it takes to engage employees are three ways in which data analytics can help HR succeed, according to the CHRO of a financial sector employer.

• Unfortunately, most HR professionals are in the dark when it comes to that growing technical area, according to Monique Herena, CHRO at BNY Mellon, writing at Recruiting Trends.

• She cites a a 2014 Deloitte survey that found a meager 7% of large employers self-rated as having "strong" HR data analytics capabilities. And just 14% had any form of talent analytics program in place (more than 60% were "intent on building one").

Dive Insight:

At BNY Mellon, talent management analytics are front and center. They are being used to help improve management decisions, increase hiring success and enhance talent investment strategies. Their use appears to be working, as the company's data analytics, for example, showed an 80% reduction in candidate time-to-apply simply by adding a mobile option.

Some basic guiding principles during the talent-analytics capabilities improvement include: data sharing with key decision makers (perhaps by trying a global HR scorecard); benchmarking internal data against external data to create a "full picture" (and smarter hiring decisions), collecting and using data that "matters most" to the organization, and finally, turning to the "human touch" (empathy, listening, conflict resolution) when applying analytics to talent management.