Interviews

Data and analytics sit at the core of digital business”- Jorgen Heizenberg, VP Analyst, Gartner

Think-out-of-the-box with nonconventional approaches and atypical employees. Act inside out by creating an attractive corporate culture that prioritized humans. Bring diversity of people, roles, and development paths to the D&A teams. But most of all, develop a talent strategy. A systematic approach to attracting, sustaining, and retaining employees. Mr. Jorgen Heizenberg, VP analyst at Gartner., share more insights on the same.

 

  1. What are the factors contributing to the ongoing talent crunch across Data and Analytics teams?

Data and analytics sit at the core of digital business and demand is increasing. However, being successful with data and analytics is less about tools and technologies as it is about people. But talent is in short supply. Besides ‘The Great Resignation’ – people (silently) quitting their jobs – there is also a fundamental re-evaluation of personal values: ‘The Great Reflection’. Also, organizations are taking very similar approaches in recruiting talent, and they are all fishing in the same pond. They have very similar requirements, mostly technical skills, and a couple of year of experience.

 

2. What kind of models can enterprises adopt to retain talent?

A quick fix can be to work with external service providers, consultants. Among other things like offering more innovative project, part-time work, or crowdsourcing, consider increasing presence and visibility, for example on social media or engage with academia. Shifting to a more human centric approach, with better work-life balance opportunities or skills development. Driving cultural change and offer an environment where personal values better align with corporate values. Seeking talent diversity, for example by looking at different backgrounds in education or geography. For example, consider neurodiverse talent that is highly qualified, yet highly underemployed.

 

3. Considering the attrition challenges being faced by the D&A leaders currently, what are the steps they can take to address these concerns?

Attract and retain are two sides of the same coin. People are your capital. Loss of people is loss of knowledge and value. Retaining talent is mostly about wellbeing. Organizations need to track and score how their employees feel and perform and use this to roll-out policies, develop training and skills. Also, by raising the level of data literacy, the ability to read, write and communicate data in context, there will be more data literate employees and a data driven culture, with opportunities for D&A talent. Every organization should have an individual development and retention plan for its employees. Make sure you know, what reskill or upskill opportunities exist. Balance the team by not just looking at legacy diversity (like race or gender), but also style diversity (extrovert, introvert) and thought diversity (analytical, creative). Focus on employee visibility, put team member in the spotlight. Consider rotation and open a ‘talent marketplace’ to match internal jobs with employee skills.  Automate simple task, using augmented products or low-code tools, freeing up scarce resources to make more impact.

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