Boosting Workforce Digital Dexterity

Digital workplace leaders operate at the intersection of shifting workforce dynamics and technological advances. To succeed, these leaders need to navigate these uncertainties to deliver sustainable business value from digital workplace programs.

"boost employee engagement"

 The digital workplace is a business strategy to boost employee engagement and agility through a more consumerised work environment; this includes

• Strategizing, planning and governing of initiaitves in order that they deliver value consistent with the needs of the business
• Creating a work environment that makes employees doing high-impact work more effective
• Reimagining and reinventing the workplace by incorporating new technologies into existing IT architectures

 There is not doubt that digital business transitions are accelerating the need for broad workforce digital literacy. IT leaders that help employees boost digital dexterity are an essential component of a digital business strategy. 

 It is not without its key challenges:

• Digital business is accelerating the need for digital literacies to analyse, collaborate, integrate and innovate. Yet, few organisations have a strategy to promote employee digital dexterity.
• Promoting digital dexterity is an enterprise wide effort, yet few organisations make internal, coordinated efforts to develop digital dexterity. Even fewer create a corporate culture that nurtures digital dexterity.
• One of the core factors in promoting employee engagement is learning on the job, yet most IT and HR groups rarely promote new digital literacies as part of an engagement initiative.
• Most job forecasters are predicting shortages in critical IT job functions such as application development, data analysis, software integration and Internet of Things (IoT) practitioners, yet few organisations plan to help non-IT professionals acquire competencies that will help close the skills gap.

Recommendations

• Help top executives make the connection between employees, digital work and engagement to fuel digital dexterity investments.
• Promote digital dexterity with a digital workplace education program.
• Use digital dexterity planning to identify the digital competencies needed for digital business success.
• Create and run a digital dexterity training service, making selections from a wide range of programs and tool options.

A great research note by Matthew W. Cain and Jack Santos, which also looks at four elements of building a sustained commitment to deliver digital business results via workforce digital dexterity. These elements are:

• Talent — Designing digital literacy initiatives that recognise, and build on, individual personalities, interests, skills and roles.
• Planning — Building a sustainable operational strategy for digital dexterity.
• Culture — Creating a workplace culture that values and rewards digital dexterity initiatives.
• Tools — Exploiting a variety of digital dexterity education services

They  also identify a sex step model that is practical and easy to implement and include some good examples of dexterity behaviour and benefit. In addition their recommendations at each stage link well together, pulling a number of activities and actions together.

Read the full article: Deliver Digital Business Results by Boosting Workforce Digital Dexterity