Roundtable Focuses on Improved Use of Big Data

The hospitality industry is ready and willing to dig into big data to improve human resources policies and decision making, but participants in the 2015 Hospitality HR and Big Data Roundtable expressed substantial concerns regarding specificity, quality, and comprehensiveness of the available data. Big data have four attributes—volume, velocity, variety, and veracity—all of which must be addressed appropriately. One important initiative is the effort to integrate human resources data with such other data types as that from customer and operational performance sources. Roundtable participants also took note of the potential ethical concerns associated with the use—or misuse—of such large amounts of sensitive information. More critically, the roundtable considered the need for a forward-looking strategy to develop data analysis skills and knowledge, which will be needed to address these challenges surrounding big data, both for HR and for industry operations in general.