Workday isn’t saying exactly how it works out which high performers are likely to move on to new pastures, but businesses can use the software to try and keep key staff members on the payroll with a salary increase or the offer of a new position. “We leverage a lot of the same thinking and algorithms [as consumer apps like Netflix] but the data is more complex, and there are more algorithms,” Workday’s co-founder and chief executive Aneel Bhusri told the New York Times.
Workday’s system is also able to scan social media profiles and other databases to categorize people by their occupation type (enabling recruiters to cast their nets more widely) and the firm is making developing programs suitable for schools as well. Other business software developers such as Salesforce and Tidemark have already announced that this type of big data analysis will play a key role in their products in the future.
“Making an employee happy, improving the efficiency of a company, these are hard problems that affect corporations,” said Mohammad Sabah, director of data science at Workday. “We’ve applied machine learning to affect consumer tastes [and] putting it to career choices, to pay and employment, have a huge upside if we do it right… we’re surprised how accurately we can predict [when] someone will leave a job.”
The implementation of these systems is still some way off, but they’re in the advanced stages of development — don’t be surprised if in a few years’ time your boss knows about your plans to quit before you do.
[Image courtesy of Creativa Images / Shutterstock.com]
