It was the second day of our Business Intelligence (BI) Workshop and I was looking forward to it after the insights that we delved into after day 1 session on Clustering and Dendograms. The session was centered on the concept of Perceptual mapping and its usage in various functions of Business.
My biggest apprehension before taking up BI was whether it will add any value to me as I am from the Human Resource Specialization. The doubts were made crystal as soon as the sessions began. Starting from Clustering to Perceptual mapping, the usage of these are aplenty and in every domain of business.This was made very evident by our discussion and the examples discussed in class.
The topic that caught my attention today was that of Perceptual Mapping. The usage of Perceptual mapping was explained to us through a Mobile phone example where in we could map the perceptions that people have about the different Smartphone’s that are selling in the market. Hence, the perspective provided to us was from the Marketing angle. Being a student of HR, I tried to draw parallels between its usage in Human Resourcing and more importantly the areas that are a bane to the organization.
HR is currently in its best possible era wherein the firms are finally realizing the potential that lies in its effective utilization and the value it can add to the bottom line of the business. Thinking from the point of view of a budding HR professional, to add value to business, I think Perceptual Maps is a fantastic tool which can find application in solving/analyzing the various problems plaguing HR in firms today.
As an example, as per the PwC report, “Reconnecting HR to the Bottom line” ,today the biggest problem IT/ITes firms are facing is that of Attrition. The numbers are startling and CEO's around the world have rated this as their primary area of concern. Thus, an analysis on the trends prevalent in attrition is of paramount importance to any organization today.
As a methodology to finding out the reasons of employees quitting their jobs and drawing a correlation among them can enable us in stemming the exit of the employees and make the business more profitable.
The perceptual Map would allow me to analyze attrition from the perspective of different factors. I would be able to gauge the biggest contributor to why people are quitting their jobs and how I would be able to retain them. However this is not something new, companies have been doing this for years now.
The unique feature of the perceptual map is that it allows us to see the relationship that exists between the different factors also.
To understand this, let us assume that the 2 most important reasons for attrition are growth of the individual within the organization and the learning opportunities that the firm provides to the employee. So far we have never tried to find out if their exists any relation between these 2 stated factors, however through a perceptual map we can find out if these 2 are indeed related!!Hence, our perspective on the reasons for attrition increases manifold and curbing it would become relatively simpler.
As per a study on Attrition by Peter Capelli , a firm spends nearly 60% if its cost on employees, out of which, Training and Recruitment form the biggest chunk after Salary. Hence, attrition is a major contributor to the expenses of a firm. This is not all, high attrition numbers reduce the goodwill of the organization in the market.
Another aspect of Perceptual map that we can use is that of the comparison of attrition levels of the competitors in the market. This will give us a good idea of how the others are performing in terms of attrition. Lower attrition levels could be a source of competitive advantage to the firm and can drastically reduce the expenses that a firm undertakes in dealing with employees leaving the organization on a regular basis.
Hence, analysis of Attrition patterns in a firm can be understood well through Perceptual maps and I think I will make extensive use of it in various other divisions of Human Resourcing as well!!
Submitted By:
Ashish Bhatnagar
Roll no:12128 (HR)
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