Those days when workplace was just a physical place where employees turned in regular office hours are far gone. As the workplace becomes truly digital, employees are required fast adoption of new tools and ways of working. But how do employees fit to your digital strategy?
The buzzword digital transformation has become strongly discussed topic in all boardroom, to say the least. In fact, MGI forecasted earlier this year in A Future that works Executive Summary, that 50% of today’s work activities could be automated with the existing technology. The research of World Economic forum on the other hand, estimates that even 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t even exist yet.
Going through digital transformation like this, automation is not enough. Instead, companies must reinvent their entire business models. The ultimate goal is to provide better service for customers. Even though we are happy that the transformation is more often driven by desire to build better customer experiences, there is often one overlooked key group – employees.
Employees and their workday experience play huge role in forming the experience your company is ultimately providing to customers. When digitalization is not considered from the employee perspective it leads resistance to change, lower employee satisfaction and decreased productivity – all preventing strategy implementation and successful change.
To impact on employees’ workday experience, companies should be building more intelligent digital workspaces where communication barriers, leadership, and most of all, learning models are rewritten. Just like top-bottom management has being turned upside down, the collaborative and community-driven learning should replace the traditional classroom learning.
In Digital Era you can always hire employees that have the education, skills and experience that fit to your organization’s needs, but keep in mind that employees, no matter how qualified, are always learning and developing. By providing opportunities for them to adopt new skills and knowhow, you’re accelerating natural learning and growth.
So be careful not missing this key element of your digital strategy. In the end, employees are your competitive advantage that enable the change.
