People analytics: ethical considerations for organizations

People Analytics (PA) is an emerging area of innovation which, although it draws on traditional principles of human resources management (HRM), represents a seismic shift in the power of organisations and their leaders to understand, shape and strategically optimise their workforce. This shift comes about from the application of techniques from the statistical and data sciences to harvest, analyse and visualise complex data on individual employees, teams, divisions and the workforce as a whole, to provide actionable insights. These techniques, which may be applied at the level of discrete applications or enterprise-wide information and communications infrastructure, can enable greater transparency about individuals’ performance, skills, aptitudes, weaknesses, threats and future potential and may be useful throughout the employee lifecycle, from talent acquisition to retirement. Although many organisations are beginning to deploy PA techniques in routine HR and business analytics, few are meaningfully engaging with the important ethical issues and risks these present for employees’ privacy, autonomy, and future in the workforce. We are currently undertaking a scoping review to explore how ethical considerations for PA are being considered in the academic and grey literatures and the uncertainties characterising these new forms of HR practice. The topic is timely in light of the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has begun to orient vendors and users of PA innovations to their vulnerabilities and potential liabilities