Companies in all industries are collecting more data. Retailers inspect our buying habits, airlines monitor how on-time flights are, and almost every email, phone call, and interaction is recorded. This data can be used to benefit you. This data can help companies to solve customer problems, improve services, and make better hiring decisions.
Also Read: Advantages Of Data Governance
We are in the golden age of data. A data lake can be built in any company. Although we have all this data and it’s becoming more powerful than ever, one thing is certain: Most people aren’t good at understanding it. That’s why Data Literacy Training is necessary for them.
A New View Of Data Abilities
Over the last five- to ten years, data skills have evolved. In the early days, companies needed data skills such as SQL, data extraction, and information normalization.
Modern professionals will need to learn how to challenge the outputs from algorithms as AI becomes increasingly critical to their business.
Although we require advanced data skills to be able to make decisions, it is the soft skills associated with these skills that can make a big difference.
Practical Strategies To Increase Data Capability
Data skills are now essential to almost all roles in organizations. It’s hard to know where to begin improving these skills when they are so scarce in so many businesses. We encourage people to focus on the basics.
First, make sure everyone knows how to use them. Excel is still very relevant: one-fifth of the world’s adults use Excel. Excel (including the still-popular CSV file) is the common currency. Many software programs can offer reporting and analytics functions. But for most users, who are unable to access full business intelligence, Excel (and the still-ubiquitous CSV) will be the best choice. An infographic of 100 Excel Features is provided to assist you in prioritizing.
Also Read: Why Is Data Literacy Critical For Your Team?
The second step is to establish a capability academy that teaches data skills. A capability academy provides employees with the opportunity to improve their job-related skills. They are sponsored by business leaders, usually the CEO, who care about data skills at their company. Too often, corporate learning systems that are general-purpose claim they can do everything and end up doing very little for everyone.
A data-oriented academy aligned to the change program your company cares about is more likely than a general-purpose corporate learning system. You can create a skills framework by carefully selecting the data skills your workforce requires. That framework will be used to curate experiences, people and courses, videos, podcasts, videos, articles, and other resources that will ignite learning joy. Keep the rest. You’ll need hundreds of learning opportunities to increase your data skills even for a large number of people. Quality beats quantity.
Also Read: The Top Benefits Of Data Governance In Businesses
Third, encourage others to use examples and stories to help them understand how data can be used well. If the company uses data for major strategy changes, share the results with the entire company so they see examples of how this can be done.
Fourth, include data in all important decisions. It is important to ask “What data do you have?” or “Can we get this data that supports or refutes this business case?” as a standard question. Encourage others to question data presented as evidence in support of a particular decision. Is the data reliable? Is the analysis correct Are there any other checks? Is there any other evidence that supports this story? How important is the decision to make? What evidence are we going to need to support our decision?
