Nearly every position in an organization requires data skills. Companies require more data-literate people to be able to understand and draw inferences from data and ask the right questions. These skills are available for anyone to learn, and companies can support and assist them in their development, enabling them to drive change and enhance capabilities.
Companies are accumulating more data than ever in every industry. Micro-inspecting our buying history allows retailers to measure how flights arrive on time. Airlines also track every interaction, service call, email, and correspondence. What is the benefit of all this data to you? Companies can use this data to improve customer service, operations, and talent selection.
Employees must be data-literate to understand the details of data analysis and how they relate to their roles within the company.
Some employees might be in the position to work directly with data. This group of employees needs a deeper understanding. They will need to be able to use data analytics software and data science techniques, such as text analysis and organizational networking analysis, and which models and techniques work best for specific business problems. Data literacy consultant helps in improving workforce skills.
Who is responsible for boosting data literacy skills?
Many schools and colleges lack the skills to tackle the problem of data literacy.
Skills development programs are flourishing in employers today as the responsibility shifts from academic institutions to employers
Employers should take on this responsibility. They have the resources and would certainly reap the benefits.
A wider view of data skills
The skills required to be a data scientist have improved over the past five to ten years. Companies needed skills in SQL, data extraction, and information normalization in the early days.
Business people must understand the nature and operation of these systems. They also need to know how to secure and manage data privacy and security. Modern professionals need to be able to challenge algorithms and not assume that they are right. AI is becoming a more important component of modern business.
The analytics teams explained that they didn’t suffer from a lack of technical skills but rather from the lack of skills in data-driven problem-solving. These teams specifically mentioned those lacking the skills to:
Ask the right questions
- How to determine which data is relevant, and what data are valid.
- So that the data are meaningful and useful, it is important to understand the data.
- To test hypotheses with A/B tests, see what the results are.
- Make visualizations that are easy to understand so that leaders can easily grasp the results.
- Use storytelling to help decision-makers understand the bigger picture and take action based on the analysis.
We need to have advanced data skills but our research shows that these soft skills are even more important.
It is costly to not understand the context of data. An analytics team from a global retailer discovered a huge variation in the sales volume and employee turnover at different locations. They analyzed the relationship between revenue and various metrics and concluded that stores with more specialized job positions and solution-oriented sales teams outperformed their peers. They also had happier employees and fewer turnovers. The executives were impressed when the team presented their findings after spending a whole summer analyzing the data. The executives believed that there was something significant in the results.
Practical ways to increase data capabilities
Data skills are essential for nearly every position in any organization. It can be difficult to find the right place to improve these skills, as they are so lacking in many businesses. We encourage people not to lose sight of the basics.
A second option is to create a capability academy for data-related skills. EWSolutions allows employees to learn specific skills that are relevant to their job. Many general-purpose corporate learning programs claim to be able to do everything, but when they lack a clear purpose, they end up doing very little. It is more likely that a data-oriented academy aligned with a change program that the company cares about will work. To create a skill framework, you must carefully select the data skills required by your workforce.