Employees reluctant to adopt data-driven working methods

New research commissioned by analytics database Exasol finds that 63 percent of UK data decision makers experience resistance from employees in adopting data-driven methods.

Key drivers of this resistance are anxiety over job redundancy if all decisions are based on data (39 percent), a lack of understanding (39 percent), and a lack of education on the positive impact data can have (36 percent).

Based on a global survey of 2,000 data decision makers, the research also discovers that part of the problem of data acceptance lies in 40 percent of respondents admitting that data strategy is not being driven by anyone in the business. This lack of clear direction and communication about the benefits of a data-driven approach hinders employees' understanding and inhibits enterprise growth. Legacy IT infrastructures were also cited as an obstacle to democratizing data by 79 percent of respondents.

"At a time when data analytics is becoming mission-critical to businesses there is a need for organisations to have a clear data-driven strategy that all employees and stakeholders are bought into," says Helena Schwenk, market intelligence lead at Exasol. "This is the catalyst to achieving a shift in culture that a data-driven strategy demands as every employee will come to understand that rather than threaten jobs, an effective data strategy that encourages the democratisation of data, opens the door to exciting new career opportunities and progression."

On a more positive note, 44 percent respondents believe that a cloud model could make it easier to democratize data across an organization. Of those that have already moved data workloads to the cloud, positive impacts include faster query response times (47 percent), improved ease of access and shareability of data (42 percent) and faster development of new data applications (41 percent). Flexibility is where a hybrid cloud approach can really deliver. Sensitive workloads can stay on-premises while the public cloud can be used to manage less critical information.

The full report is available from the Exasol site.

Image credit: benzoix/depositphotos.com