Effective Digital Transformation is Not Just About Technology
A successful digital transformation effort should take an entire organization into account – its processes, culture, and people. If your people lack the right mindset to change and the current organizational practices are flawed, digital transformation will instead only magnify those flaws. And there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating and in many cases forcing changes in the way we work.
When establishing goals for digital transformation, think about what you want technology to do for your business. Click To Tweet
For instance, if you want to improve incident reporting and resolution times, what systems will help you get there, and how soon would you like to start seeing results? Once goals are firmly established, think about the strengths and weaknesses of your current workforce. Since end users will ultimately determine the success of your digital transformation, gauging where they are is an essential step in this process.
Just as enterprise decision makers should have a clear goal for their business before investing in technology, leaders should mind the skills gap of their employees as part of this effort. A solid skills strategy will take into account where the workforce is now and what sort of development or training they will need in the future.
Employees should be skilled for handling change and building resilience – not just the new digital tools or processes – if you want the endeavor to succeed.
And, don’t forget about the skills leaders will need to help their diverse workforce adapt to change – vision casting, advocacy, leading by example, empathic leadership and cultural awareness are just a few.
Reskilling for Transformation
Reskilling, or re-training your workforce requires strong alignment at the enterprise level, using systems thinking to understand impacts and create strong adapt/adopt tactics can help to alleviate pain points associated with disengaged or resistant employees. Having a single source of the truth for change communications is key to managing the grapevine and gives employees a place to go to seek out information on their own.
An enterprise portal like the ServiceNow Employee Service Center, is a great central hub for communications, campaigns, employee engagement, questions, social Q&A, and communities as one channel in your overall change management efforts.
Ensure that employees are engaged, providing consistent messaging from those in top positions throughout the process. Likewise, give employees forums to ask questions, share success stories and the ability to experiment and “fail forward” with change. Emphasize that the digital transformation process is an opportunity to learn and develop, rather than a process to be frightened of.
The goal for many organizations should be to identify the impacts of digital transformation and reskill the workforce accordingly. Employees that are individually skilled at dealing with change will positively impact adoption, while leaders will influence and lead change.
Principal Consultant, Human Resources
Stacy is a multifaceted Human Resources leader with over 20 years of experience driving overall HR department leadership focused on advancing company missions and organizational development. She has developed a reputation for being a trusted advisor to business leaders with a specialized background in business transformation, talent management, and organizational development.
