Data and analytic leaders must invest in diversity and inclusion initiatives to overcome talent gaps and fuel innovation.
If you had to choose a team to help your company innovate in the face of digital disruption , which type would you pick? A team you feel comfortable and confident with, full of like-minded people and colleagues who are friends? Or a group that you don’t know socially and may not want to, because they are so different from your usual co-workers?
“Diverse teams feel uncomfortable, but produce better results. The diversity of a team, coupled with a culture of inclusion, can impact the success of the team in terms of business performance, understanding customer needs, innovation and the accuracy of its decisions,” says Rita Sallam , research vice president at Gartner. “In fact, a recent Gartner survey among analytic and business intelligence (BI) leaders indicates a positive relationship between the diversity of teams and business benefits. Data and analytics leaders have an opportunity to lead the rest of IT in leveraging diversity in all forms.”
Cross-functional teams with a broad skill set as well as different work and behavior styles will lead to more innovative thinking
Data and analytics is the centerpiece of digital business transformation and needs diversity to drive innovation and overcome challenges. The gender (and other forms of diversity) gap requires leaders to think of strategies to retain and manage people from diverse backgrounds and build a culture of inclusion.
Gartner has identified three fields in which data and analytics leaders should become active to attract, grow and leverage talent in order to optimize business outcomes.
Improve candidate selection practices
It’s human to be biased. That doesn’t mean that our bias has to be reflected in the way we attract and select talent.
