Building a digital organization

As we strive to build a knowledge-based economy, digital transformation has come to the fore. An organization’s ability to exploit digital technologies can be a fundamental source of competitive advantage. Commercial success is increasingly dependent on an organization’s ability to nurture a digitally-oriented culture, shape the workforce of the future, and design innovative customer and employee experiences. Analytics and evidence-based insights on mindset, culture and skills are usually instrumental in this process. Transformation is partially reliant upon the human resources (HR) function to shape the workforce’s skills and mindset— requiring significant effort and long-term commitment. According to a recent KPMG survey, more than a quarter (28%) of the workforce will likely need to be reskilled or upskilled to cope with the pace of digital transformation.¹ The likelihood of growth and success improves if an organization has aligned its people strategy to support its digital objectives.

For organizations undertaking a holistic digital transformation journey, HR will play a crucial role by investing in the following essential components:

• Building and enhancing the right digital mindset and culture
• Harnessing analytics to measure and improve productivity, understand intrinsic talent needs, and design a digitally equipped workforce for the future
• Enabling leadership to encourage a move towards being digitally ‘future ready'

Digital organizations, powered by people, are:

• Customer and employee centric
• Invested in building digital knowledge
• Innovative and risk taking
• Visionary and purpose led
• Agile
• Learning oriented
• Collaborative and synergistic
• Diverse and inclusive