Alteryx: ‘Investing in employees allows businesses to invest in themselves’

What are the key attributes you look for in candidates when hiring new talent? 

How can businesses invest in current employees to help them advance their creative problem-solving skills, data analysis and passion for learning? 

These are just some of the questions raised by Libby Duane Adams, Chief Advocacy Officer, at Alteryx, during her exclusive conversation with UNLEASH. 

Alteryx – a leader in enabling data analytics and AI across enterprises – serves more than 8,000 businesses in 90 countries, and is on a mission to ensure data is viewed as an asset – rather than being siloed in teams. 

During our conversation, Duane Adams gave UNLEASH the inside track as to how Alteryx is solving these questions, and how other businesses can follow suit.

Diversity is a business priority

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) should be on every business’ radar. However, it can be tricky to decide which aspects to focus on.

For Duane Adams, diversity takes two fronts; focusing on people and correctly leveraging technology to enable people.  

“I am very vocal that diversity is not a male-to-female equation – there certainly is a gender element, but it should encompass every demographic set of characteristics,” Duane Adams explains. “When I think about diversity, I think about education, countries of origin, and people’s backgrounds, in addition to demographic and psychographic characteristics.”

This is because Duane Adams believes that too frequently, leaders only want to hire others who look or think like themselves. After all, nothing’s easier than working with peers that affirm your ideas or thoughts – but that’s not how diversity is built. 

We need to have different ways of thinking about a problem and different ways of approaching it – that’s where diversity really comes into play,” she continues. “So, leaders must welcome a diverse way of thinking based on background, experiences, and exposures.”

Regarding the people skills side, Duane Adams highlights that leaders need to communicate soft and technical skills, while being creative problem solvers. 

“It’s that ability to think differently about the business. From a diversity perspective, you must bring people onto the team to think creatively about problem-solving.

“Candidates don’t necessarily need to have a resume of skills that checks every box, but they must be able to bring those diverse experiences and skills into the problem-solving process.

“Some of the success that we’ve had from Alteryx is seeing our customers bring diverse teams together which are made up of very different skills.  

“Data is everywhere. Analytics is everywhere. The more diverse businesses enable their people to be, the better they set themselves up for success because the market is changing.” 

One way that this can be achieved, Duane Adams explains, is through leaders being empowered to think differently and more broadly about how they can change their business. 

To accommodate this, Alteryx has changed its hiring process to encourage candidates that may not have been open to all opportunities – such as obtaining college degrees – to apply.

Instead, the business focuses on curating a team of diverse individuals that can be taught how to solve problems with data with the right learning resources and opportunities. 

“We question job descriptions, and rather, look for evidence that someone’s done similar tasks before or that they can learn the skills needed, rather than just basing our knowledge on their qualifications,” she explains.

Continuing, Duane Adams highlights that business leaders should want to train employees to fill the specific requirements for their company, rather than expecting them to bring all the resources and skills desired. 

It’s more about showing off your talent and skills than checking boxes,” she adds. “Investing in employees allows businesses to invest in themselves.  

Supporting this, Alteryx ensures each employee has time to upskill during work hours – not after work, not at weekends, or not in their lunch breaks. This is to encourage employees to spend 10% of their week learning a new topic that interests them. 

DEIB priorities for HR leaders

After highlighting the various different benefits of DEIB, Duane Adams concluded by sharing her key action points for HR leaders – their first being that change needs to start from the top.

“If I were a CHRO or CPO, I’d be locking arms with the CEO to ensure we’re talking about metrics that make a difference,” she says.

“I would then encourage the CEO to make this a priority for all other C-suite staff, to ensure that everyone reporting to them is reaching at least one DEIB metric.”

Finally, she highlights that every CPO or CHRO should support leaders of every level throughout the business, to ensure they’re hiring diverse candidates within their teams. 

This must start by removing biased language from job descriptions to ensure they’re inclusive and attractive to everyone, while also encouraging internal mobility. 

As a hiring leader, I know that I’d rather upskill my team than outsource new talent,” she concludes.

“That’s where the CPOs and CHROs can play vital roles in the advancement process of either new talent joining the company, or upskilling existing talent within the organization.”