Data heroes
Royal Mail advanced analytics has won the prestigious ‘Best Place to Work in Data’ award at the 2018 Data IQ Awards.
Designed to reflect the skills, commitment and capabilities of individuals, teams, organisations and solutions, the Data IQ Awards are the most coveted trophy in the industry.
Business intelligence (BI) and analytics used to be distributed around functions within Royal Mail Group. In 2016, the decision was made to create a new group BI function, which would add-on data science and advanced analytics capabilities.
Under the leadership of Wade Munsie, head of advanced analytics and BI development, the function has built a new operating model and grown from scratch to nearly 60 colleagues in 2018.
‘As you know, we like to shout about our successes in BI but this time we really have something great to shout about,’ said Wade.
‘We beat the likes of Barclays, Sun Life and Sainsbury’s to the top spot with the judges being impressed by our “start-up approach” and “creative strategies” within a traditional organisation.
‘We continue to build on our analytical capabilities, while at the same time becoming the first choice company in data and analytics. Well done all - it’s this sort of publicity that helps us maintain our amazing internal recruitment and retention record.’
What do they do?
Building an effective and motivated team has been critical to the growth of the advanced analytics function, as has ensuring that talent acquisition and retention operate in a new and different way. This has seen a new approach to recruitment adopted, which looks for storytellers, mathematicians, coders, analysts and people capable of critical and creative thinking, rather than those with a technology bias.
This type of profile has been dubbed ‘unicorns’ because of the challenge that finding them represents. To tackle this, new strategies have been adopted, such as recruiting senior roles via recommendations or direct LinkedIn campaigns, with existing members of the team actively encouraged to blog and share best practice.
Junior roles are recruited via apprenticeships, graduates, MScs and post-doctoral candidates. There is also a strong focus on personal development through continuous training, which sees 20% of colleagues’ time spent on self-development and research. This has delivered two direct benefits: only 15% of new recruits have been acquired via external recruiters, delivering significant cost savings to the business, while just three colleagues have been lost to other UK companies, a much lower attrition rate than is usual.
Since its creation, an initial team of 30 has received approval to double in size in 2018. Diversity is also a key element of the talent management strategy with women representing 35% of the team, while over 15 countries are represented.
The Data IQ judges were impressed by the scale of the function’s growth – almost a start-up from within a very traditional business. The focus on talent acquisition and retention was clear and they applauded the willingness to think differently and adopt new strategies.
