SPECSAVERS
broken spectacles to brain tumours . Being able to access data of this sort will impact the whole organisation . More and more people have come to us wanting to start self-serving and learning how to develop the insights themselves and that ' s really helping us on our data transformation journey !” Tina Christison endorses this wholeheartedly . “ During the pandemic , having better access to data has enabled us to do things we never could before , enabling us to spot opportunities and do things differently . And we ' ve probably only scratched the surface of the potential that exists !”
Building data-aware teams Building a coherent data team and a collaborative culture has been very important to Mannion ' s strategy . “ I ' d like everybody at Specsavers to realise they have their own data story to tell . We want everybody to be able to use data easily and answer common questions in minutes . So we invest significant time as a team to transition our knowledge and we ask other talented data professionals from across the business to share theirs too . We have a growing community of data professionals that share their insights , write user guides , ask and answer questions , and develop a culture of adding to and improving the work that ' s already been done .”
One original method we are trialing is to invite departments to second people who want to develop their data skills to join the data team for a limited period . They come with a data project that they own and learn best practices while they develop that . “ It ' s one way to train the wider organisation more effectively – creating a ripple effect . If we can train five people , and they can train another five people , gradually we ' ll get to everybody !”
There was limited recruitment during the pandemic but things are looking up . “ We are on a recruitment drive at the moment , and we have done really well and filled the majority of roles . However , the more technical data roles have proved slightly harder to fill . We are helped by the fact that Specsavers is such an attractive company to work for ; there ' s a lot of job satisfaction working for a company with a mission to change people ’ s lives for the better through improving their sight and hearing . From a data perspective we feel honoured to ensure data fulfils
208 August 2021