People Analytics and Data-Driven HR in the IT Sector: Using Workforce Data to Improve Hiring, Retention, Performance and Workforce Planning

The Information Technology (IT) sector depends on skilled people more than on any other single resource, yet it faces persistently high attrition, intense competition for scarce skills and rapid shifts in project demand. People analytics, the systematic use of workforce data to inform people decisions, offers a way to manage these pressures with evidence rather than intuition. This paper presents a conceptual and review-based examination of data-driven human resource management in IT organisations. Drawing on published research and practitioner literature, it develops an integrated framework that links workforce data sources to four decision domains: hiring, employee retention, performance management and workforce planning. For each domain the paper identifies the questions that matter, the metrics and analytical methods that answer them, and the interventions that follow. It also discusses implementation barriers, including data quality, analytical capability, algorithmic bias, privacy regulation and employee trust, and proposes a staged roadmap for adoption. The paper argues that the value of people analytics lies less in sophisticated algorithms than in disciplined problem framing, trustworthy data and transparent, ethical use. It concludes with propositions for future empirical work