TRENDING
• Employer perception : almost half of the leaders responsible for driving these upskilling programmes see little requirement for new data skills in the next five years
Alan Jacobson , Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Alteryx
The research also revealed that it will be critical for businesses to deploy strategies to help drive the skills upgrade by :
• Formalising a clear and communicated data strategy alongside upskilling programs that address the core competencies of data literacy required across the entire analytics journey . 24 % of data workers report they received no data training at all from their employer . There is a clear opportunity to standardise skills through internal training projects to deliver success and enable existing workers
• Targeting Digital Transformation at cultural , upskilling and technology strategies that help to create analytics competency to fuel digital innovation . Corporate-led upskilling has not kept up with the pace of accelerated transformation seen through the COVID-19 pandemic . Although businesses see themselves as falling behind their peers , there is an inconsistency between the value placed on digital skills , the responsibility for precisely who will deliver it , and the prevalence of these skills in the future
• Cultivating a culture of data analytics from the top-down , enabling workers to deliver efficient benefit through digital skills . Almost half of Gulf leadership teams know the skills challenges they face will harm their business . There is strong demand for digital skills to fully meet the new challenges posed by an increasingly digital workplace . Enabling skilled workers to deliver on their own skills is a core – and underconsidered – strategy to drive competitiveness
“ The skills disconnect has the potential to seriously hinder the Gulf ’ s competitiveness on a global scale ,” said Kerry Koutsikos , VP , MEA , Alteryx . “ As our business environment becomes increasingly digital , data literacy is the skill that will pay off both in the short- and long-term – moving businesses away from time-consuming manual tasks and towards automated insight generation for faster time-to-insight and accelerated decision-making .
“ Only organisations that empower their workforce to affect business change with data will reach the true potential of their Digital Transformation initiatives , but the core gap between the high business value attributed to such skills and the resources applied to upskilling in this area will stall transformation . With formal education still decades from catching up to the business reality , it is the responsibility of individual businesses to incentivise workers and reward good quality data work .” p
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