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S4 | Ep 12 | Practical Tips on Building an Award Winning Diverse & Inclusive Team with Alex Sidgreaves, Chief Data Officer at Zurich Insurance
Episode 1223rd January 2024 • Driven by Data: The Podcast • Orbition Group
00:00:00 00:53:29

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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.

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Get in touch to learn more - Cambridge Spark

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