A large U.S. bank faced a shortfall of nearly 400 employees across their tech organization. One of the biggest areas of need was within their data teams, where employees had very specialized skill sets. Data Engineers were tasked with building data pipelines, managing data integrity, and overseeing back-end data flows. Data Analysts, on the other hand, were liaisons with the business, helping them interpret and utilize the data. Because of this split in job families, product teams had to have both Data Engineers and Data Analysts deployed to every initiative. However, overlapping job responsibilities between these two groups caused significant confusion and handoffs between engineers and analysts resulted in long development lead teams.
Two Roads was brought in to develop a program that would upskill employees and merge the Data Analyst and Data Engineer job families. To accomplish this, Two Roads first worked with SMEs and leaders to develop a comprehensive training program with more than 250 hours of mixed-media coursework. The Two Roads team also created stage gates and assessments to ensure that program participants had a clear path to completion and could demonstrate their mastery of engineering and analytical skills. Finally, the Two Roads team facilitated the entire program, developing progress reports for each participant, communicating this progress to senior leaders, creating a recognition system to keep participants engaged, and providing white-glove service to help shepherd hundreds of participants through the program.
After 18 months of leading this effort, Two Roads successfully transitioned management of the program to an internal team. This team has leveraged the tools and processes developed by Two Roads for more than two years as they continue to administer the program.
As a result of the data organization upskilling program built by Two Roads, more than 200 employees have become end-to-end data experts. Product teams can now complete the same amount of work with smaller data teams, thereby reducing staffing shortages. Additionally, since all program participants have the skills to assist at any point in the data lifecycle, data issues can be more quickly resolved. Finally, program participants have found greater demand for their expanded skill sets throughout the organization. This has given those who have completed the program greater career flexibility and a leg up on their peers when applying for new internal roles.
The Outcome:
- Upskilled 200+ employees making them more productive and able to support the data ecosystem end-to-end
- Improved employee retention through investing in employee development and unlocking internal career growth opportunities
- Decreased headcount shortfall by reducing need for overlapping positions
