Creating A Digital Talent Strategy for Digital Transformation

While enterprises across India and the world are investing in developing a good digital transformation strategy for their organizations, most of these initiatives fail to meet their goals. According to Boston Consulting Group, having a digital talent strategy is one of the key pillars to bring a digital transformation. Companies that focus on building a digital culture are five times more likely to be successful in their digital transformation strategy.

Culture is, usually, one of the most significant barriers to effective implementation of digital transformation strategy followed by a lack of understanding of the digital trends. The digital revolution is forcing a transformation of business and even making organizations rethink their business models. Organizations need futuristic leaders who can understand the benefits of digital transformation and can embrace them proactively.

One of the biggest challenges for organizations is to find the right talent to cope with what lies ahead. Since organizations need to be sure that they are fit to react quickly to whatever future throws at them, they must have people who are innovative and adaptable. This is why organizations need a good digital talent strategy.

To bring in a digital culture, organizations not only need people with digital skills but employees with varied skill sets who can think innovatively and adapt instantly. A truly diverse work environment can ensure that the organization has a culture where innovation thrives and new ideas are conceived on a day to day basis. The employees must be encouraged to try new things, embrace change and apply their skills in new areas. An adaptable workforce can address the skill gap that the digital world has posed.

Employers need to think widely about sources of talent and must not restrict themselves to specific geographies or sectors. While many organizations are coming up with a new digital transformation strategy, not many understand that they also need a digital talent strategy for successful implementation.

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Five effective ways for an Organization to build a digital culture are:

1. Build Transparency: To embed a digital culture successfully, every employee in the organization must be aware of the impact of digital processes on revenue, sales and productivity, irrespective of their role and designation. Maintaining transparency must be the starting point to initiate a digital transformation strategy in the organization. It can be achieved through open communication via internal memos, blogs from leadership on key developments, social media groups and open forums.
2. Managerial Transformation: To inculcate innovation and digital transformation, it is imperative that the managerial culture is reviewed and traditional organizational methods are re- examined. Employees need the necessary managerial framework and some amount of independence to help them mobilize their skills. In this highly dynamic work environment, it is difficult for organizations to continuously deal with external changes while simultaneously adjusting the internal processes.
3. Encourage Collaboration: When employees work in collaboration, the workflow improves. Sharing insights and learnings between departments is critical to support innovation and digital transformation in an organization.
4. Learning and Knowledge Sharing: Learning Management should be an important part of the digital talent strategy. Organizations must scale up the dissemination of knowledge and development of skills to accelerate the building of a digital culture. Flexible learning must be encouraged through a learning management system so that employees can learn on the go and tap the available knowledge.
5. Identify the Skills: Employees should be aware of the challenges posed by the acceleration of technology. It implies going beyond technical literacy and understanding how they can improve their work life by acquiring the requisite technical skills without getting intimidated by it. Apart from learning how to use certain tools correctly, it is also important to understand the purpose of the tools, how they can be used in different ways and how different tools can be used together to get the maximum benefits out of them. To encourage innovation and digital transformation, this practice must be followed across the organization in a planned and strategic manner.
6. Risk- taking: Innovation and digital transformation cannot take place without any risk. Using technologies and insights with an innovative mindset can enhance the knowledge of a workforce and help them optimize their tasks efficiently. Encouraging risk taking goes on to show that there is trust between employees and employer and the organization has a digital talent strategy that embraces innovation.

Cultivating a culture that encourages collaboration, communication and innovation lie at the center of a digital talent strategy. Organizations that want to bring in a digital transformation, must inculcate these behaviors, identify the hindrances and follow a defined roadmap to move towards a digital culture.

Step 1: Define what needs to be changed

An important part of the digital talent strategy must be to define the digital behaviors and establish systems to make sure that employees display those behaviors. Many organizations make the mistake of expecting employees to display digital behaviors without clearly defining it. According to BCG, organizations must:

• Identify their digital goal and the characteristics of their target culture in a distinct and unambiguous manner
• Document expected employee behaviors and organizational policies aligned to the organizational vision
• Conduct a gap analysis to assess where the culture is and where it needs to be and then communicate it to the employees.

Step 2: Stimulate Leadership Characteristics and Engage Employees

The management must display leadership characteristics across the board. According to BCG’s research, there are a few measures that organizations can take:

• Leaders must be given opportunities to act as role models and be the torchbearers of innovation and digital transformation
• They should be able to coach the team members on a day to day basis and help them practice the desired behaviors. Also, there must be a 360- degree feedback and group discussions at team levels to create benchmarks and baselines for digital behaviors.
• Those who display actions that contradict the expected digital behaviors must be held accountable.

Step 3: Align the organization to successfully implant a new culture

While pilot programs can assist in embedding a digital culture in the organization, scaling up these programs can be more challenging. This is because usually the pilot involves top leaders and there is constant measurement as well. There is not enough incentive for the managers to align with the new culture which is why scaling up becomes a challenge. BCG’s research suggests that organizations can take the following steps to scale it up successfully:

• After successful completion of pilot, revisit the operating model and anticipate what is required.
• Incentivize the right behaviors and make individuals accountable for displaying contradicting behaviors.
• Behavioral assessments can be made a part of the hiring, onboarding, training and the overall digital talent strategy.
• The desired behavior must be incorporated in the communication strategy and customized communication and awareness strategies can be used to align the organization to the new culture.

Organizations need to be aware of the complex challenge that digital transformation technologies bring with it and that talent will be the biggest differentiating factor for their success. While the skills needed for the digital age are far more complex and varied than ever before, they are absolutely indispensable. Organizations need a workforce that is adaptable and innovative with composite skills and the willingness to embrace and drive the changes proactively. They also need a strategic HR function that can formulate and enable a successful digital talent strategy.

References:

• Key steps to follow to create a digital culture- People Matters Editorial Team, 08 August, 2019
• 4 Best Practices For Building A Digital Culture In Your Organization- Morgane Mallejac, 18 April, 2018
• How to Create & Cultivate a Digital Culture in your Organization
• People Strategy for the Digital Age: A New Take on Talent- 18th Annual Global CEO Survey
• How to Gain and Develop Digital Talent and Skills- Rainer Strack, Susanne Dyrchs, Adam Kotsis, Stephanie Mingardon, 19 July, 2017