A critical part of onboarding involves introducing the culture and setting expectations. If your association strives for an analytical culture that makes data-guided decisions, you should think about how to include data literacy in your onboarding or orientation process.
Data Literacy
Data literacy is the ability to derive and communicate meaningful information from data. Data literacy is an important skill for new employees to learn to make sure they know what data is available, where they can go to get answers to their questions, and how to interpret data. These competencies are essential in a culture that values an analytical mindset.
Levels of Data Literacy
The level of data literacy required depends on the roles and responsibilities of the new employee.
If they are heavily dependent on data, like a Director of Marketing, they should be able to interpret data, analyze data using business intelligence tools, identify key data sources, and communicate the results of analysis.
To maintain and strength a data analytical mindset within your association, all employees should understand the importance of evidence-based decision making. They should also be able to interpret meaning from the organization’s dashboards, visualizations, or reports representing the association’s key metrics for success.
Incorporate Data Literacy into Onboarding
Here are a few ways you can incorporate data literacy into your onboarding process:
- Provide new employees with an orientation to all key data systems
- Provide a tour of dashboards and visualizations your association uses
- Encourage usage based on staff role and responsibilities. Set expectation for usage and monitor accordingly.
- Document analytics decisions and processes and share with new employees.
A quality onboarding experience sets the stage for new employees to be successful and productive. Studies show the importance of onboarding. Did you know that newly hired employees are 58 percent more likely to still be at the company three years later if they had completed a structured onboarding process? Make sure your new employees are data literate and ready to make data-guided decisions. They’ll be more successful and satisfied in their new jobs and that’s good for everyone.
