How CBRE created its Data Literacy program with DataCamp

The challenge: bridging the data literacy gap

In a rapidly evolving, data-driven landscape, CBRE recognized the importance of driving data literacy to maintain its position as a commercial real estate leader. The company's dedication to delivering exceptional services to clients has always been supported by its talented workforce. Equipping this workforce with the necessary data skills would enable them to work smarter and more efficiently and be prepared for the future.

As Ciaran Bird, Divisional President Advisory Services, UK & Ireland, highlighted, "To stay ahead of the competition and ensure we continue to provide a world-class service to our clients, we must provide data-driven advice to our clients. This is not optional — our clients demand it."

CBRE's work is highly relationship-focused and combining the human element with data is foundational to providing the very best client outcomes. By harnessing the power of data-driven insights, CBRE can unlock greater value for its clients while maintaining its strong human-centred approach.

As Emily Hayward, Digital & Data Transformation Manager at CBRE, puts it: “Our work is highly relationship-focused and relies on our people having the best information, data, and insights at their fingertips—so we can deliver the very best client outcomes. That’s why enabling every person at CBRE to realize their data potential and take their data skills to the next level has never been so important. It’s crucial to our future as an organization.”

The solution: a role-relevant data literacy program

CBRE partnered with DataCamp for Business to help achieve its data literacy ambitions, launching a comprehensive, scalable data upskilling solution, supporting tailored learning paths for over 2,000 employees across the UK and Ireland.

CBRE's program went beyond offering traditional cookie-cutter courses to its workforce, but instead adopted a cutting-edge holistic approach guided by the following core principles:

• Engaging & Impactful: The program focuses on driving community engagement and fostering a cultural shift across the company by changing hearts and minds
• Aligned with Business Goals: The curriculum emphasizes data skills that directly apply to business tasks and outcomes, ensuring maximum relevance and value for commercial real estate applications
• Diversity & Inclusion Driven: The program offers something for everyone in the organization, from leaders and brokers to personal assistants, promoting an inclusive learning environment
• Data-led & Digitally Enabled: The program leverages the same data skills taught within its content to continuously improve and iterate on its design and delivery.

By leveraging custom tracks, CBRE was able to offer a comprehensive and tailored learning experience for their different personas.

A key aspect of this partnership involved building four custom tracks tailored to various levels of experience and data skills, ensuring that learners received relevant and targeted training on data literacy, Excel, Tableau, Power BI, SQL, and Python.

• Leadership & Executives: Equipping top decision-makers with data-informed strategies
• Data Practitioners: Enhancing technical expertise and business acumen for data-focused roles
• Client facing teams: Empowering client-facing teams with foundational data skills to deliver better client insights and effectively communicate them
• Non client facing teams: Empowering enabling functions with the essential data skills to support our people and processes in a more effective way.

In addition to building custom tracks, DataCamp provided a range of support in driving learner engagement at CBRE. This included custom marketing collateral, brochures, booking speakers for learner events, and more.

DataCamp supported CBRE's internal roadshow and offered various sessions with customer success managers and learning solution architects to help build and maintain learner engagement.

Moreover, DataCamp delivered custom reporting for CBRE, outlining relevant metrics that are specific only to CBRE’s use cases.

This strategic partnership enabled CBRE to rapidly advance its data literacy goals and empower its workforce with the data skills necessary for the future.

The results: data capability at scale

CBRE's data literacy program has yielded significant results:

• Over 2,000 learners either completing or currently participating in the program.
• Workforce confidence in working with data has improved dramatically, with 81% feeling more confident in working with data since the start of the program.
• 88% of learners reported positive engagement, and 70% of participants reported that the learning content met their needs.

CBRE's data literacy program also demonstrates the power of personas in upskilling initiatives. Acknowledging the significance of the cultural change, CBRE prioritized upskilling from the top down.

By combining DataCamp’s data literacy courses with leadership workshops, they tailored a learning experience specifically focused on data literacy for business leaders. 

One of the most notable outcomes has been efficiencies gained from learners, with an average of 1-2 hours saved per learner per week, showcasing the program's effectiveness in enhancing productivity. Joe Barren, Valuations Analyst, shared his experience, saying, “I did the Tableau DataCamp training, as for this year, part of my focus is on dashboarding. I found the training very useful, and it has helped in my role as I am currently building an Accommodation dashboard.”