Foster a data culture or be left behind

The exponential growth of data and the rapid pace of innovation necessitates cultural transformation within organizations in order for them to thrive.?

Today, innovation doesn’t rest with any single team within an organization, it must be fostered throughout: built into the values and purpose and realized through every employee's actions. Maximizing the potential of data, requires a data culture, where the power of information and insights is utilized, responsibly, by everyone in the organization. The value of a data culture cannot be overstated - the adoption of data intelligence and literacy across an organization with a strong data culture is roughly four times higher than an organization whose culture is lacking.?

Organizations that foster a data culture work to educate and empower every team member to help them better understand and analyze information, which in turn fosters better decision-making, increases productivity and encourages engagement. At TELUS, we go further, committing to using data in an ethical manner to derive meaningful and useful insights that generate value for our customers. Here, we summarize three key benefits of a data culture:

1. Encourages teams to ask the right questions?

Without an understanding of the opportunities in data, team members may make decisions based on gut feelings or anecdotal evidence. When they understand the value of the data, they will proactively consider the questions it can help to answer. With a data culture, team members will know how to protect data, consider it in context and communicate it appropriately. Moreover, they will know how to ask questions about what data we will need, how to collect it at the right time and in the right way in a product or service lifecycle. A data literate team can ask deeper and more meaningful questions about what the data is really saying as well as consider biases that need to be addressed.?

2. Supports better, faster decision-making

Better questions lead to better decisions (and better outcomes). Actively and knowledgeably engaging with data improves processes and outputs. Not only can teams make better decisions with the insights they produce, but they’ll develop new ideas faster. In non-data-focused cultures, teams often spend a lot of time trying to find data or working only with what they have, while many have to ask more superficial questions about the information they’ve received before they can start any meaningful analysis. Those who have access to data are more likely to know what data they need and, if afforded the opportunity to work with it, can more easily make evidence-based decisions and quickly identify and understand any potential data-related risks.?

3. Improves employee engagement

Today’s employees want to do more meaningful and valuable work. Having a data-driven culture can help them do just that –?it encourages them to share ideas, speak their mind and influence decision-making. According to Forrester, employees who were highly satisfied with data programs at their organization were 10 times more likely to be highly satisfied with their organization overall. They were also nearly twice as likely to say they would probably be at their workplace in the next two years.?

It starts with data literacy?

Data cultures don’t develop on their own, they require a commitment to data literacy: the ability to read, write and comprehend data. At TELUS, we’ve created a data literacy program that helps team members improve their data skills, no matter their role.?

One lesson we’ve learned is that driving data literacy requires champions in every corner of our business. To that effect, we’ve created a unique program to provide specialized training to team members who then act as our own team of in-business data leaders. More than 325 team members in every part of our business have received specialized training as Data Stewards to help them identify risks and oversee data governance within their teams. They’re supported by experts in data governance, security, privacy and data ethics, but they play an important role within their own teams to ensure data is used properly, data-related reviews are completed faster, and privacy-first innovation is the standard.?

Creating a data-centric workplace is a must, especially given how much more data is being generated every day. Fortunately, there are ways to give teams the autonomy they need to deliver more insights and protect information at the same time. Ultimately, there’s no question: those who want to grow will need to create a culture that puts data first.?

Pamela Snively is the Chief Data & Trust Officer at TELUS. Pam encourages consumers to more fully understand what responsible private sector organizations do to protect their privacy and organizations to join her in her mission to earn and elevate consumer trust in our digital ecosystem.