Data is a gold mine that can help intelligent businesses drive growth. Surveying over 300 L&D leaders from diverse industries, DataCamp found that 89 percent of companies say investing in data fluency is an urgent priority due to its direct impact on business outcomes. Likewise, the percentage of business leaders who prioritise data fluency among their employees rises to 97 percent. While investment in training and solutions has largely focused on groups of employees, individuals across all business functions are increasingly expected to become self-sufficient with data and make data-driven decisions. This indicates that the more data fluent companies are, the more they acknowledge there is a long way to reach desired business objectives.
However, technology has developed far more quickly than a typical employee’s ability to harness its insights. This fast-paced tech development might cause massive data productions from every direction, such as legacy systems, productivity metrics, survey results, sales performance and workforce costs. Consequently, some employees might feel overwhelmed by these changing working practices. In HR areas, for instance, to drive better employee engagement and motivation, HR teams need to calculate at least two data analytics which consequently affects their personal performance.
See also: Workforce Insights: HR Functions and Data Code
So how can HR teams develop meaningful insights to help shape people practices and drive business value? The answer: HR should work effectively with people’s data as both problem solvers and coaches. As problem solvers, HR teams work with businesses to understand which questions to ask about the workforce, then determine what data is available to help find the answers. As coaches, they help analyse the data and identify patterns, trends, or outliers that provide guidance or merit further investigation.
Moreover, to improve your data literacy as HR professional, here are tips adapted from Deloitte:
Data literacy training content is readily available at little or no cost from external providers, such as YouTube. Many companies also have data literacy courses developed for employees. With these contents, basic data literacy should be achieved through self-training. Here are what you can do more:
Quality beats quantity, there are many knowledge events out there and in your company. Choose one that aligns most with your expertise and follows through. Internal knowledge exchange offers good benefits such as to learn basic skills or specific skills and is likely free as it is provided by your company. External knowledge exchange is a good place to learn chances on how other HR professionals become expert in data.
By working with embedded specialists, you can gain opportunity to perform data and analytics tasks yourself. This helps complete the process of improving your skills in data literacy. Consequently, upskilling your learning skills will enable you to work efficiently on several data needed for your company growth.
Read also: Leveraging Technology for Better Business Meetings
