Talent power helps to Achieve Digital Transformation Success

Lack of relevant digital skills could be a significant barrier to your overall Digital Transformation Success goals. Learn why developing an agile talent muscle is critical to combat future disruptions.

The wide gamut of challenges thrown by the COVID-19 situation has spurred digital transformation (DX), influencing organizations to switch to the new-age models faster.

During the pandemic, most consumers have dramatically switched to digital, compelling companies to swiftly transform their core internal operations, supply chain interactions, and customer interface channels. Across the business landscape, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics, and automation played a pivotal role in raising organizational productivity levels and enabling businesses to meet customer demands effectively.

This sudden digital change has also brought together a new set of enterprises’ challenges. For many organizations, digital transformation success remained elusive due to the absence of qualified talent. There are many others who, despite attaining early success, feared hiatus in their Digital Transformation Success goals due to a massive gap in talent supply and demand for next-gen skills.

The skill gap is a significant barrier

A 2017 report commissioned by McKinsey Global Institute projected that by 2030, 14% of the global workforce – almost 375 million workers – will be required to change their jobs or acquire new skills due to automation and AI. Another recent survey by the same firm on future workforce needs states that nearly nine in ten executives and managers mention their organizations face skill gaps already or expect holes to develop within the next five years.

The problem is likely to be intensified further because most of the existing skills programs and training provided by the educational institutes are specifically designed to cater to the current job requirements and not necessarily the future

Some of the significant challenges that organizations are facing in their quest to find the right talent with DX-related skillsets today are:

The most in-demand skills that enterprises need today are quite different from the ones they needed earlier.
Since most DX implementations in the industry are recent, not many tech resources have been on enough projects to have substantial hands-on experience.
Experienced professionals who are well-versed in the DX technologies such as AI have been highly sought after and are short in supply. Therefore, the risk of such skilled resources being poached by competitors is high.
Traditional recruitment practices are no longer effective to hire people for managing the varying technologies or processes.
The existing workforce of businesses also needs new skills to manage an evolved ecosystem where humans and machines collaborate to deliver a task.

This has created a severe dearth of professionals with proven credentials in these areas.

Reskilling and upskilling for the digital age

Upskilling and reskilling solutions can certainly help bridge some of the demand-supply gaps that exist today. In today’s fast-evolving technology ecosystem, No longer can one expect to build a lifelong career with just a college degree at hand.

Robust leadership and employee development programs that provide training with exposure to real-life business situations can help businesses future-proof their workforce and provide much-needed confidence to work with the machines.

Some of the recommended strategies that can help enterprises future proof themselves against the growing talent shortage problem in the hard-to-find DX skills are:

Categorize the skill gaps that exist in your organizational ecosystem
Integrate learning and development as a never-ending exercise within the organization
Evaluate long term, and short-term needs based on future technology investments
Find out the skill gaps that can be closed by leveraging training and development vs. hiring new talent
Invest in a consistent and comprehensive skill-development training program

Organizations that are reluctant to adopt the continuous learning curve will find it hard to survive in the era of automation and digital transformation. By partnering with strategic workforce training solution providers such as NLL Academy, you can find a faster way to transform your teams and solve the DX skills gap.