How to nurture a digital workforce

bySara Brown May 27, 2021

Why It Matters
Adopting new technology is just one part of becoming a digitally savvy
organization. Leaders need to make sure employees are on board, too.

When it comes to digital transformation, most businesses focus on

technology and new tools as they vie to keep up and find new ways to
appeal to customers.

But focusing too much on the technology and tasks that come with
digital transformation leaves out another vital component to successful
transitions — a company’s employees, who need to be able to use new
technology and feel comfortable and supported in new roles. 

The stakes are high, according to Kristine Dery, a research scientist with
the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, who studies
employee experience.  Companies that invest in the right experience for
their people, and make sure they are ready for the future, tend
to outperform their competitors. On average they deliver 19% more
growth in revenue than their competitors, and have 15% more profit.
These companies are also more innovative, better at cross-selling, and
deliver a significantly better customer experience, Dery said.

“There's a lot of opportunity here, and companies are leaving a lot of

value on the cutting room floor by not investing in the experience of their
employees,” she said.

Work smart with our Thinking Forward newsletter

Insights from MIT experts, delivered every Tuesday morning.
Email AddressSIGN UP

Companies should aim to make their employees empowered problem

solvers, Dery said, by creating a supportive environment of continual and
rapid learning where they can leverage technologies to solve
unpredictable problems. These employees need to have confidence to
solve problems, and the skills to work effectively in a digital world.  

Leaders also need to consciously address transitions themselves to help

their employees adjust to shifting roles, acquire new capabilities, and
manage emotional energy to navigate change and uncertainty,
according toHal Gregersen, a senior lecturer in leadership and
innovation at MIT Sloan. 

“We make enormous investments into the technical side of digital

transitions, and comparatively minimal investment in actually helping
individuals navigate the challenging transition from here to there,”
Gregersen said.

Here are three ways to look out for employees during times of digital
transformation.  

Manage the balance between technology and employee skills  

Employees thrive when they have the right technology, the knowledge to
use that technology, and the freedom to learn, experiment, and improve
things, Dery said. A good way to think about this is freedom within a
framework — employers create the framework, or decision rights, and
beyond that employees are able to redefine and redesign work to get the
best results.

To work effectively in a digital world, employees need to understand

more than just how to use the technologies provided for them in the
workplace, Dery said. They also need the skills and the freedom to make
changes to improve workflow or deliver the right outcomes to customers.
For example, a component designed to give employees secure access
to one part of the business could be reapplied to other parts of the
business or used to grant smoother access to outside visitors.  

Companies are leaving a lot of value on the cutting room floor by not
investing in the experience of their employees.

Kristine Dery
Research Scientist, MIT Center for Information Systems Research
Share
Focusing too much on acquiring the right technologies without paying
attention to whether employees have skills and are empowered to
leverage value from them can lead to situations in which companies find
themselves hostage to technology, Dery said. Companies need to avoid
the trap of investing too much in the equipping of people to do their work
without the necessary training to enable them to use those tools
effectively, she said.

Yet focusing too much on building high levels of digital skill without being
able to implement and scale innovation is equally problematic. Without
the digital technologies to support their new ideas, highly competent
people tend to apply workarounds such as pulling technologies from the
cloud to add value. This results in either pockets of digital innovation that
can’t be scaled, or worse, much-needed digital talent becomes frustrated
at the lack of technology to support their ideas, and leaves.

It’s a difficult balance, Dery said, and requires leadership to focus on

both digitizing work and digital fitness of its employees. CISR research
has mapped different pathways companies take toward digital
transformation, based on how organizations change customer
experience and operational efficiency. Companies that focus first and
foremost on the operational backbone — technology matched with
employee skills — tend to create better experiences for their employees.
On average, digital transformation significantly impacts 67% of
employees, Dery said, and reducing the complexity of employee-facing
technologies better equips employees to add value and determines skill-
building priorities.

A focus on offering exciting developments to customers often comes at

the expense of employees, Dery said. This can lead to a “culture of
heroics” where employees have to make things happen for customers
without being well supported.

“The allure of being able to constantly generate new innovation for the
customer often leads to less focus on the employee,” she said. “It's a
pathway of addiction: It creates a lot of excitement in the market, boards
love it, [and] everyone gets very excited by all these new innovations at
the front end. [But] they are less concerned and become even less
willing to open the black box of all the problems that are facing
employees.”

Accelerate employee adjustment to new roles, not just new tasks

Gregersen, who co-authored “It Starts With One: Changing Individuals
Changes Organizations,” and teaches MIT Sloan Executive Education
courses about leading successful transitions, said leaders tend to treat
adopting digital tools as an end, when they should be considered means
to an end.

“Many managers are biased towards the belief that if we change the
system, structure, and process, individuals will magically do what we're
asking them to do,” Gregersen said.

This includes emphasis on how employee tasks change, but little

attention toward how employees will experience a change in their
workplace roles and the emotional energy it takes to navigate that
transition. But neglecting any one of those areas makes it unlikely that
employees will expertly use technology to make the gains companies
want.

Adjusting to transitions requires asking questions in three areas,

Gregersen said:

1. “What new capabilities (skills, mindsets) must be acquired to master

the new work to be done?” Gregersen said his research with Roger
Lehman, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, shows that an exclusive focus
on learning new tasks is a knee-jerk response for most leaders. “We get
really caught up in the 'Don't just stand there, do something' logic. And
when that happens, we start doing all these new things and fail to grasp
the broader implications,” he said. When tasks to be done are changing
and significant, employee roles in the organization are also changing.
While learning new tasks is important — for example, adjusting to
working during the pandemic meant learning to how to use
videoconferencing tools — it isn’t the only thing to tackle in transitions.

2. “How are roles changing?” Adjusting to new roles during digital

disruption can be similar to adjusting to work and life in a new culture,
Gregersen said. There is often a honeymoon period, followed by culture
shock when people realize how much they don’t know, then adjustment,
and then mastery. Accurately assessing and negotiating role changes is
often overlooked, Gregersen said. “Most leaders excel at thinking, 'Oh,
here are the tasks to be done,’ but they often don't step back to consider
how specific roles are changing and what that means for people
experiencing a significant identity shift at work,” he said.

3. “How successfully is everyone acknowledging and channeling

emotional energy, every point of the way?” When roles shift, identities
change, and people have to acquire challenging new capabilities, they
will face emotional ups and downs. People who used to follow up with
customers, for example, might be lost if an automated system takes over
that task, and question their work identity. Leaders need to create
psychologically safe spaces for people to express how they are feeling
and find ways to work through their feelings. Emotional engagement
can’t be overlooked, Gregersen said, because even if progress is made
in other areas — adjusting roles and acquiring capabilities — failing to
manage emotional energy well can send a digital transition backwards.
“Any major change, or even minor, involves loss. Grief is our human
response to loss. So when navigating any transition, we're losing
something to get something,” he said.

Have the right leadership in place — and make sure to lead by example
Within the organization, who should be tasked with looking out for
employees and making sure they are given what they need to succeed
during the transition? Companies have approached this in two ways,
Dery said.

A more traditional option is appointing a senior leader with skills in both

technology and business, someone like a chief employee officer or chief
employee experience officer.

“That can be very effective, particularly if you get the right person in that
role,” she said.

But people with that combination of skills can be hard to find. Another
option is “two in a box” style leadership, Dery said, which would bring
together a technology person and a business person to jointly fill the
role. The two leaders would have to work toward the same objectives,
with joint key performance indicators, rather than each leader having
distinct goals.

These leaders are the ones who will continually steer teams that work
within their areas toward overall goals for the organization, Dery said, as
well as manage talent.

The change in thinking can be difficult, especially for large, established

organizations, Dery said. But it’s important for leaders to set the right
tone.
“I can't stress enough that one of the big roles of those leaders is to
create a safe, supporting environment where people are able to learn,”
she said. “They can't [learn] if they're constantly feeling like their job is in
jeopardy or their reputation is in some way vulnerable.”

Gregersen said leaders of changing organizations need to first reflect on

and manage their own transitions to model what they are expecting
others to do. For example, auditing their own past responses to
significant transitions in work and life often reveals a pattern of action
that continues to guide how they navigate change, he said. Another tool
for tackling tough transitions is the question burst — a method created
by Gregersen where individuals or teams brainstorm nothing but
questions about a challenge to kickstart progress.

Leaders should also remember that change is ongoing.

“This is an iterative process that companies have to keep going through,”

Dery said. “It's not an end state that you reach … you have an ongoing
process of ensuring that your people are constantly able to t hrive in this
world of digital.”

===========================================

4 strategies for future-proofing your workforce

by

Sara Brown
 Sep 5, 2019

Equipping a company to excel in a changing business landscape isn’t just about technology
— a successful company needs a digital-savvy workforce with the mindset to take on new
challenges and embrace new ways of working. 

To future-proof the workforce, companies are developing new performance, reward, and
training strategies. Some embrace peer-led education while others make a game of digital
knowledge. In other companies, preparing the workforce for the future means making sure
digital natives are versed in business fundamentals. 
Cookie-cutter approaches aren’t enough to transform companies, according toKristine Dery, a
research scientist with the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research who
moderated a panel discussion about future-proofing the workplace at the recent MIT Sloan
CIO Symposium. 

“Now we're starting to understand a little more the nuances of what that looks like, and what
we need to provision for people, and the support we need to give them to make that work
more effectively,” she said.

Here’s how four companies are preparing their employees for the future.

Back to school at DBS Bank

At DBS Bank, a multinational company headquartered in Singapore, digital readiness and
future-proofing the workforce are part of everyone’s agenda.

Work smart with our Thinking Forward newsletterInsights from MIT experts, delivered every
Tuesday morning.

Email Address

SIGN UP

All 26,000 employees are encouraged to keep learning despite age or seniority, said Shefali
Gupta, the bank’s executive director who manages strategy and planning for the technology
and operations team. The company focuses on motivating employees to learn new skills. 

A series of experiments revealed that people want to learn from their colleagues and bosses,
Gupta said. So DBS started a teaching program called Back to School, a week-long event
with classes held every hour, all taught by employees. 

Employees can attend any classes, and sessions are recorded and made into a video series.
The program was a success, Gupta said, with 1,500 class sign-ups in the first three hours of
class. Sessions were full from the second day on, and there was a waitlist for people eager to
teach courses. 

“It makes the whole learning thing really fun,” Gupta said. “It also engages the teachers …
we were taken by surprise. People who’ve never taught in their life stood in the class and they
delivered such amazing sessions.”

DBS has invested in other initiatives to help employees navigate changing workplace needs:

 The company’s “people transformation index” gave 50 employees the chance to try a
different job. For example, project managers worked in sales and operation managers took on
technology projects. The initiative invests in employees, offering them growth paths and a
door to new areas. 
 Employees have the opportunity to transfer skills. Live bank tellers are increasingly replaced
by automated tellers, Gupta said. Their skills, like chatting with customers and solving
problems, can transfer to automated telling and talking with customers on social media. 
Digital citizenship at Schneider Electric 
At Schneider Electric, having a digital mindset means having passion for technology and
innovation and the mindset to bring the organization along with you in embracing those
ideas, according to Amy deCastro, vice president of human resources for Schneider’s secure
power business. 

Schneider created a “digital citizenship” initiative for the company’s 140,000 employees in
which people can achieve four different levels as digital citizens: basic, intermediate,
advanced, and expert. Another group of people are considered disruptors, technical experts
that disrupt the company. These categories are embedded in talent reviews, deCastro said.

Embracing a digital mindset is a big shift for a company that started in the mid-1800s, and
can challenge longtime employees who suddenly find their skills obsolete. Some embrace the
new way of thinking and become digital trailblazers, deCastro said, while others have trouble
coming on board. deCastro said the company has created an environment where employees
feel safe trying something new, and even failing at that attempt. 

 “If they don't grasp it, if they don't love it, it's okay. That's fine,” she said. “We'll reposition
you into something that you might have a little bit more passion for.”

Agility Olympics at State Street

State Street in Boston is taking a gamified approach to future-proofing employees, according
to Natalie Vinitsky, chief agilest, strategist, scrum trainer, and managing director at the
financial services company with 40,000 employees. 

State Street focuses on agile transformation, Vinitsky said, introducing a game to achieve
bronze, silver, and platinum levels of “agile maturity” and certification. The competition
improves performance as teams strive to reach the top levels, she said, and employees also
gain satisfaction from achievement and recognition.

“Every single year we tweak and we make it a little bit harder, so they’re not feeling like
they’ve settled in their platinum achievement,” she said. “Think about the Olympic Games
that happen every year. ... it definitely shows managers and even team members where they
are and how to progress and how to continuously improve.”

Directing growth at Liferay

Preparing employees for the future looks different at Liferay Inc., a commercial open source
software company based in California that is barely 15 years old.

The company’s 1,000 employees are in their late 30s, on average, and already well-versed in
technology, said Michael Han, chief technical officer and vice president of services.    Instead
of arming the staff for digital, Liferay is working on traditional business concepts. “The
challenge for us right now is actually having these folks realize that agile is not ‘throw all
caution to the wind’, there’s no control, those types of things,” he said. 

The company grew so quickly that the right training infrastructure hadn’t been put in place.
So Liferay hired a new vice president of people to work on merging “old school” controls
with the company’s innovative mindset, helping employees without ample management
experience learn how to measure success. 

The key is focusing on the company’s core mission and vision statement. “We’re not
necessarily changing our mission,” Han said. “We're just simply adjusting how we need to
get there. And I think that message for our employees [is] that at the end of day, we're still
trying to hit the same goal. All we’re doing is giving them more tools and more coaching and
training to get there.” 

==========================================

5 Key Characteristics of the

Digital Workforce
There’s a lot of talk about digital HR and the digital workforce. In this
article, I will answer the question of what the digital workforce is and how
you can apply this knowledge to make better people decisions. To do this, I
use the five key characteristics that any digital workforce needs to have.

What is the digital workforce?

The answer to this question is a bit ironic. If you search the internet (and I did it
for you), the short answer is: no one really knows. According to the Deloitte
Global Human Capital Trends report from 2017, it is rated as very important! The
picture below shows the percentage of respondents rating this digital HR trend
“important” or “very important”.

Of course, the digital workforce is not the same as digital HR – but it has a lot to
do with it!
To learn what the digital workforce is, we can best look at the organizations that
already leverage this. These are the high-growth firms like Google and Facebook
were a few years ago. These kinds of organizations can scale up their workforce
very rapidly by leveraging all the digital capabilities available.
If we can learn from these high-growth organizations we can start to apply these
learnings to our own organization. In my talk below I use the book Exponential
Organizations to explain how these organizations make better workforce
decisions and leverage all the digital capabilities available.
In the video, I explain what the digital workforce is, how it will change the way we
work and how it can be used to make the organization more effective.

Characteristics of the digital

workforce
As you saw in the video, the digital workforce consists of five key components,
which can be remembered by the SCALE acronym.
1. Staff on demand
2. Communities which are maintained and leveraged
3. Algorithms that enable the workforce to operate more efficiently
4. Leveraging off technology to fully automate work
5. Engaging the workforce that remains
1. Staff on demand
One of the key characteristics of the digital workforce is staff on demand. Staff
on-demand centers on leveraging people outside of the organization.
Oftentimes, this is referred to as the distributed workforce. 
Organizations are increasingly moving away from employees with contracts, and
relying on staff on demand. An example is Uber that has a fleet of drivers that
come online whenever they feel like working. Interestingly, the number of
drivers at any given time correlates with the number of people who are looking
for taxis. Most Uber drivers like to work during the weekends and special events
because that’s a busy time with a lot of customers. This way the supply of staff
matches customer demand.
Similar things are happening for food delivery services like Uber
eats, takeaway.com, Delivery Hero, and Foodora. For Deliveroo, part of Delivery
Hero, it takes 2 minutes to sign up as a deliverer and usually within a few days
you are sent the Deliveroo kit – including their signature backpack – and you’re
ready to go. In this case, the workforce is very physical – but the onboarding is
very low touch and digital.
Other examples that I mention in the video, are Fiverr and
Gigwalk. Gigwalk enables you to have your product checked in any store all over
the world by people you don’t employ. This way you can get almost real-time
data on your products without having to check yourself. Fiverr is a freelance
service marketplace, which enables you to get almost any job you’d like to have
done for a few dollars.
2. Communities
A second part of the digital workforce are communities. Communities and crowd
can be leveraged for ideas and input. Examples are the increasingly popular
hackathons or innovation competitions, in which prizes are awarded to those
teams that come up with the best solutions to real-life problems.
Other examples of communities are communities of former employees. Having
access to talent that is intimately familiar with the organization can offer
numerous benefits when it comes to project work and specialized assignments.
3. Algorithms
Algorithms make life easier – and they are everywhere today. There’s an
increasing amount of tools that can be used to make a job easier. As a writer, I
use Grammarly, an online grammar and spell checking tool,
and Hemmingway, an editor that highlights complex sentences and common
errors.

For other jobs, there are other tools. Simple algorithms enable you to create
ready-made contracts, and tools like Lynn enable you to check Non-Disclosure
Agreements – which are often highly standardized – for errors and suspicious
clauses. Another app, FeeBelly scans general contracts for hidden fees or other
costly details and points them out to the user.
If there are routine and predictable tasks in your company, look into possibilities
for automation. These include routine HR processes which are also eligible for
automation. This often increases speed and improves employee experience and
data quality.
4. Leveraging technology to automate tasks
Where algorithms make work easier, automation makes it effortless. A truly
digital workforce shouldn’t be preoccupied with routine and repetitive tasks.
According to the McKinsey Global Industry Report, 23% of work hours in the US
may be automated by 2030, and 15% of global work hours. Leading this trend
will simply save you time.
Jobs that are most likely to be automated, have a predictable pattern of
repetitive activities. Below, you’ll find a list of jobs that are the most at risk.

Journalism will also be at risk of automation. This article may be written by a bot,
based on the YouTube clip that was included. You simply don’t know. What you
do know is that the Washington Post reported having published 850 robot-
written articles in 2016 alone.
Automation is coming and it will have a very real impact. It will make our lives
much easier but it will also challenge us to change and interact much more with
machines than we did previously. The more boring and generally more repetitive
tasks will be automated, giving us more time to spend on problem-solving and
the creation of new ideas. This will help us to up our productivity significantly.
5. Engaging the workforce (that remains)
When workers spend more time on problem-solving and creative tasks, being in
the right mental state becomes even more important. The importance of
engagement will only increase further.
Engaged workers have the energy to face the challenges of the day, they are
dedicated to their work, and are absorbed in their tasks. They are more
productive, make fewer mistakes, and are also more innovative.
With the increase in productivity, the payoff of an engaged workforce will be
even higher for organizations.
In order for workers to get in that right state of mind, they need to start thinking
of technology as something that makes their (working) lives easier first. Here lies
a task for organizations and HR, they need to prepare their workforce for a more
automated and technology-driven future. In other words: they need to create a
pro-technology mindset and culture among their employees.

One way to do this is with visual storytelling.

Especially when managers, HR, and executives don’t know how to introduce their
employees to a new idea or how to engage them in the implementation of a new
strategy, visual storytelling can be very useful. It is a complete package of
meaning, context, and emotions that draws people to a particular story. As such,
it accelerates understanding and forms a fast, consistent & common language
for organizations to get and keep their people engaged.

Conclusion
That wraps up the key characteristics of a digital workforce. I hope that this
article has shown you that digital is an inevitability – but that leveraging it the
right way can benefit the employee and the organization. Leveraging digital
helps to save time, just cost, and focus your organization and employees on the
tasks that bring the most value.