Explaining the Slow Pace of Digital Transformations

A survey of organizations reveals that executives and employees are open to digital overhauls, but impediments force them to advance at a slow pace. According to L2’s Insight Report on The Digital Organization, nine in 10 organizations are undergoing a digital transformation, but just 14% believe they are moving fast enough. Furthermore, there are major disconnects between employees at different levels. For example, 39% of surveyed CEOs said the company’s pace of digital transformation was “about right” while 64% of managers thought their organizations were moving at a “slow or “very slow” pace towards digital transformation.

Several barriers to transformation exist, but the biggest is talent, cited by 59% of executives. Just 19% of businesses believe they have the needed to develop and map a digital strategy and just 15% believed they had the skills and capabilities to guide a digital strategy. As a result, a war for hiring has broken out among organizations, which is discussed in L2’s latest Insight Report.

So who is winning in this war for talent? Definitely not CPG or luxury brands. L2 studied seven consumer enterprises in those categories and discovered all are losing talent to technology companies. Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal were especially suffering from brain drain, having lost 625 and 303 individuals to technology firms.

It might appear as if these companies are powerless in retaining digital talent lured by the likes of Google, but that is not the case. Of Fortune 500 companies, Amazon and Google have the shortest employee tenures. With their expansive resources, they can afford to make hiring mistakes. Compensation is performance-based as well. As a result, the media turnover rate at these companies is one year vs. P&G’s average tenure rate of 6.7 years. To retain digital talent, brands must think about investing in recruitment, restructuring compensation, and areas in which to maintain a differentiated competence.

See full post on the L2 Daily