While 90% of business leaders cite data literacy as the key to business success, only 25% of workers feel confident in their data skills.
With more companies increasingly relying on data and artificial intelligence technologies, algorithmic discrimination is more likely to increase. People have already heard stories about facial recognition failing to recognise “dark-skinned faces” or “robo-loan officers” denying mortgages to specific groups. To address such issues and stop them from prevailing, brands must make data literacy an organisation-wide priority.
Investing in data literacy across the organisation can help businesses bring more divergent and creative perspectives to bear on mitigating the risk of algorithmic bias and identifying other efficiencies and opportunities that data can reveal. Companies should build a data-first culture and encourage employees across teams to develop their data literacy through quarterly engagement sessions.
Brands should develop a common internal language for speaking about data and demonstrate how it connects to the business in multiple departments to help all employees connect dots between data literacy and their workflows. They should also empower employees to generate new business ideas that apply their data literacy. Further, deploy learning and development programs that teach data literacy in the context of their business problems.
[6 minute read]
