Essential Skills for Comp & Benefits Professionals

Overview

Successful Compensation and Benefit Analysts consistently use data to drive their decisions in managing projects, tasks, and strategies. This course provides you with the foundational knowledge needed to develop essential skills in project management, data analytics, Microsoft Excel, and data visualization. You’ll have a chance to strengthen these skills throughout the rest of this Certificate program as you complete hands-on projects for your professional portfolio.

Syllabus

Module 1: Project Management Basics

This module focuses on a skill in high demand around the world: project management. You’ll start with basic definitions and concepts, then different methodologies – like waterfall, Agile, and critical path. You’ll also explore useful project tools and visuals. You’ll begin to apply your new knowledge by creating two common project artifacts: a RACI chart and a project timeline.

Module 2: Using Data Analytics to Support Data-Driven Decisions

In this module, you’ll begin to explore the area of data analytics – a skill needed for many of the tasks assigned to a Compensation and Benefits Analyst. You’ll start with learning what we mean by the term “data analytics” and how important it is to business across industry sectors. You’ll also delve into the common phases in the analytic process and look at data privacy. In the later part of the module, you’ll learn about the different types of data analytics, along with the types of data, analytic methods, and tools commonly used to perform each.

Module 3: Collecting Data for Analysis

The integrity of data is critically important in data analytics, so how you collect data is ultimately important too. Here, you’ll evaluate methods and tools for collecting data. You’ll start with broad concepts of primary and secondary data collection, then look more closely at the frequently used methods like surveys, interviews, and focus groups. You’ll also consider what makes for effective survey questions and how you can formulate questions that focus on the data that really matters.

Module 4: Preparing Data for Analysis

In this module, you’ll start using the data analytic concepts you’ve learned to prepare a dataset by "cleaning" it. By doing this, you will make it more useable for analysis, and perform qualitative methods. This module focuses on the use of Microsoft Excel, and you’ll learn to create a free account with Microsoft Office 365, if needed.

Module 5: Visualizing Data and Interpreting Results

In this module of the course, you’ll learn to use the data you’ve prepared to create visuals that will assist you interpreting and communicating conclusions. You’ll begin with exploring how to create effective visuals, and then apply those principles to the dataset you scrubbed and prepared in Module 4. You’ll learn how to use those visualizations to tell the conclusion of your story with reports and dashboards. Note: You will need the dataset you worked with Module 4 along with access to MS Excel or Google Sheets again in this Module.