Data Literacy
Data Literacy is the ability to understand, use and question data in an appropriate and relevant way.
1. What is Data Literacy ?
Data Literacy, in its purest and most philosophical sense, expresses the fact to be literate with data. However, as frightening as the term could look, it does not mean anything technical, contrary to complex specific fields such as Generative AI or Data Platform Architectures. Being literate with data could be seen as having the ability to read and understand data, to interact with data and to draw insights from it.
Every individual, or any employee in an organisation, could and should acquire those functional skills as the job market and trends evolve. Data Stewards and Data Custodians are roles that started to appear a few years ago, and they totally reflect the need for business people to understand data. These people are the animators, the guardians and the trustees around company data, bringing the required Data Literacy skills in front of the stage.
Working with data is not the job of only technical people anymore, but it is an everybody and everyday matter nowadays. Whether it is Human Resources partners, Financial controllers, Marketing experts or others, they all have a role to play and shine in. Business teams must empower themselves with the right set of skills and knowledge regarding data, to be strong interfaces with technical data experts.
2. Added value
Besides bringing a better understanding level of business teams about data, Data Literacy is also an efficient digital transformation lever. As everybody have heard once in their lifetime, especially lately, that data is the new oil, data is an asset, or data is a currency. But controlling and exploiting the true value of this asset can only be possible with actors having the right level of capabilities.
Developing data projects, and extracting value and insights from data, is easier when business teams have a strong Data Literacy. Naturally, every employee will perform their data-linked job (Data Quality, KPI reporting, capture of business opportunities, etc.) with application. Value is unlocked quicker because people understand the various layers behind the simple technical aspect, and the benefits data can bring to the business.
Incrementally, an organisation investing time and money on Data Literacy initiatives will get a growing Return On Investment. By forming people and making them data literate, they actually enforce a strong partnership between business and technical people. Thus, those two sets of experts can work more efficiently on a common goal : bringing value to the organisation thanks to data.
3. Deployment in organisations
Before talking about any action or concrete plan, it is often a good practice to evaluate employees’ skills with assessments or tests. As businesses, jobs, daily work and profiles can be very different in an organisation, not everyone is at the same level, especially in complex structures. Performing friendly tests, discovery sessions and workshops can help develop awareness on such a large domain that are data activities.
Deploying Data Literacy in an organisation is not an easy task, but trainings are a way to develop awareness. Focusing on specific aspects of data, showing concrete use cases and making people practice is an efficient development program. Data Literacy should be a continuously developping parameter of the company to develop opportunities and improve people skills.
Finally, Data Literacy should be part of the company culture, just like Data Governance or Data Quality Management. This means Data Literacy should be part of a long-term program, with regular iterations, disseminations and animation over multiple years. It is only by keeping people regularly informed, trained and aware that organisations can truly benefit from people motivation and involvement.