Driven by Data: The Podcast S4 | Ep 12 | Practical Tips on Building an Award Winning Diverse & Inclusive Team with Alex Sidgreaves, Chief Data Officer at Zurich Insurance
In Episode 12, of Season 4, of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Alexandra Sidgreaves, Chief Data Officer at Zurich Insurance, where they discuss the practicality of building an award-winning diverse and inclusive, Data & Analytics team, which includes;
- Being in an organisation for 19 years
- Transforming from a traditional MI function to an end-to-end Data & Analytics function
- Moving everything back in-house
- Spending a lot of time externally to learn from others
- Having the job description of “deliver value through data”
- Why they’ve launched their 3rd data strategy
- Having internally focused and externally focused strategies
- 25% tech, 25% value and 50% people
- Putting a pound amount value to what they deliver
- Why the business doesn’t want to talk about risk or technology, they want to talk about value
- The link between D&A success and diversity
- Building an award-winning D&A team
- Why you need to destroy groupthink and promote positive challenge
- Doing 175 interviews and realising they were getting a lot of the same type of applicants
- What they changed to attract more diverse individuals and getting 170% more applicants
- Why this isn’t about ticking boxes
- How a diverse team is simply a by-product of doing the right things
- Why organisations mistake Representation and Diversity
- The power of apprenticeships and the two ways they’ve used them
- The benefits of growing your own talent
- Tackling skills shortages
- Challenging yourself when identifying the essential versus desirable skills
- The misconception that technical data people aren’t able to communicate
- Why you don’t need a data translator
- The link between diversity and inclusion, and Data and AI ethics
- The AI ethics framework and ethical committee they’ve implemented
- The key trends predicted from being a governing body member for DataIQ and Evanta
Thanks to our sponsor, Cambridge Spark;
Cambridge Spark is an education technology company that educates the workforce with critical digital transformation skills to succeed in the AI era.
They offer a range of flexible learning solutions to meet business needs, from fast deployment of new skills with bespoke programmes through to longer-term investment in the workforce with apprenticeships.
Their unique patented online learning platform EDUKATE.AI simulates real-world industry scenarios, providing learners with instantaneous feedback on their code. This hands-on, practical approach ensures that students are learning how to apply new skills to real datasets, which accelerates the business impact they can make.