We have come a long way in how we use data to manage our businesses and make decisions for our lives. Once upon a not very long time ago businesses would set their product goals for the day with a marker. Seriously. The boss would walk out to wherever finished product was stacked and draw a line on the wall. If the product stacked that high by the end of the day, they were good. As you can imagine, that was more than a little inefficient. The goal may be so high it couldn’t possibly be reached or it would be so low that the employees would reach their goal with hours left in the day and then take it easy until quitting time. So everyone was either stressed out or just not getting a whole lot done. Either way, the available resources weren’t getting used effectively.
At the same time, there is an awful lot of subjectivity without data. If the boss, whether it be the regional manager at the cereal plant or a colonel in the Air Force, shows up and asks how things are the aren’t likely to reveal any problems. Should the big boss stick around, the employees will put on a huge dog and pony show, making sure that he sees everything he wants to see and hears everything he wants to hear. In the end, the big boss likely leaves with a completely false picture of the way things get done on a daily basis. This situation helps no one.
These days we have made a lot of progress in collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data. That’s because we’ve realized that data is basically gold and the better you understand the data, the more gold you have. Getting that data takes work though. Like gold, it needs to mined, processed and formed in order to turn it into a useful product.
The need to mine data in the workplace has been made greater than ever by the response to COVID-19. Thanks to improvements made in the availability of broadband access it became possible to have many, in some cases, all of a workforce work from home. The full ramifications of this will take years to manifest and lots of data will be needed to determine how to structure the workforce going forward. Obvious places that businesses will be looking to see where they can increase their productivity will be if they actually need to keep spending money on those massive office buildings or they are better off keeping people working from home. For those who are already spending their work days at home, businesses will be looking for ways to ensure that people actually are getting the work done that they are supposed to be doing, or if the opportunity exits to increase productivity.
Related to that is the way that data sharing has increased as a result of so many people working from home. With everyone working in their own departments and separate groups, the temptation to guard your own information and keep it siloed off from others is often too great. Any time people can’t access data within a company, their ability to make good decisions is impeded which in turn reduces the company’s efficiency overall. Now, more and more information is being shared via the cloud, which means first, that it is easier than ever to share data and second, that the expectations to do so are greater. Integrating data is also recognized as being more necessary than ever before to both help the company adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and keeping a now dispersed workforce engaged.
Naturally, the best way to get the necessary data is to go to the source, to work with individuals to find out what work process works best for them, to learn how they are working in this new environment. In this way, companies can learn from those who are doing the best job of adapting and help those who may be struggling. A business need not even confine itself to working with their own employees. With TARTLE’s data marketplace any business can log in and find people willing to share exactly the kind of data they are looking for. Going to the source will help these businesses adjust their policies and expectations in the best way to benefit not just the bottom line but their employees as well.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
