Who is best placed to judge a firm’s workers? In 2018 employees everywhere will increasingly feel the effects of the rise of “talent analytics”, also known as “people analytics”, as they go about their daily work. Having been relatively slow compared with other corporate departments in making use of big data, in 2018 human-resources (HR) folk will become its most enthusiastic proponents—with significant implications for who gets hired, what they are paid and whether they are promoted. Employees will have to get used to being (often unwitting) guinea pigs in frequent HR experiments. And wise ones will think ever more carefully about how they express themselves in e-mails and on digital collaborative-working platforms such as Slack.

One reason is the pressure HR executives will face to make workplaces better for women and minority groups. The limitations of established approaches, such as training and awareness programmes, had caused “diversity fatigue” to set in. But it has become a corporate priority again after shocking headlines in 2017 about sexual discrimination and harassment in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, professional sports and big media firms, which reminded the world that bad corporate culture is a serious business risk. 

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