People play a crucial role in the digital transformation of organisations. In this context, three human elements are absolutely vital: skills, leadership and culture. These are three attributes all employees should have. This is the perspective we apply to the impact on, and the role of, people in the digital transformation process.
What digital skills do employees have? What kind of leadership is needed to achieve a successful digital transformation? What effect will this transformation have on the organisational culture? And what kind of culture is needed for the envisaged transformation to succeed? The current transformation stage the organisation is in - traditional, contemporary or future-proof – will be the springboard for the envisaged development.
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Task maturity within the organisation
The degree to which employees in an organisation are ‘task mature’ enough to achieve digital transformation largely depends on their digital skills, awareness and adaptability. At the start of the development process, people are still looking for the right way to work with systems and use them to interface with the client. At a more mature phase, the organisation has defined a digital strategy centring on such aspects as the development of digital skills. These skills are also used by organisations to develop products and services. The organisation recruits and selects staff who can work with, and adapt to, these changes, while the staff themselves realise how important digitalisation is for the continuity of the organisation.
Leveraging digital expertise
The ultimate goal is to achieve a situation where organisations have digitalised and automated most of their standard processes and repetitive tasks. Digital expertise is highly specialised, and employees know how to balance the digital capacity of the organisation with client requirements. Organisations with these skills not only use their digital expertise internally but also specifically to benefit their clients. This also means that, during this phase, such organisations are better than others at utilising creative and other skills that cannot easily be digitalised. This in turn gives their employees scope to provide more added value, with all the associated benefits for the organisation.
Developing leadership
Leaders make changes possible; it is up to them to communicate the impact of digitalisation to their departments and teams. During the early stages of change, leadership is about raising awareness and dealing with opposition. In other words, managing change, even if there is as yet no digital strategy. In organisations that are further ahead in their development, managers do have a digital strategy. At this stage, they focus mainly on monitoring and improving an adequate supply of information. Cooperation also becomes much more important at this stage, i.e. how are we going to connect all the information? And because all these information flows are coming together, managers at this stage need to adopt a much more integrated approach to vision, strategy, structure, processes and decision-making.
In a future-proof situation, managers can take progressively more decisions based on data. That said, this increased digitalisation does call for far more ethical and connective leadership.
Effect on culture
In the early development phase, the organisation's norms, values and procedures are often still highly defined, based on the past and tied to a specific hierarchy. Organisations that break away from this template are characterised by a proactive, creative and innovative approach. Their employees learn and experiment, and the organisation itself becomes flatter and less hierarchical. Employees have more time and are not location-dependent, and this has an undeniable influence on the culture within an organisation. Organisations with a future-proof approach to HR are increasingly guided by self-management and autonomy.
What can BDO do for you?
Training skills, developing leadership qualities and changing your corporate culture; our specialists would be happy to discuss your HR policy with you in the context of digital transformation. We are ready to provide you with new perspectives on the opportunities that are available within your organisation.
For more information about our specific HR services, please visit this page.
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