Empowering Teams: Talent Solutions in the Age of Digital Transformation

Aligning talent and workforce skills to a digital transformation world is an enormous challenge for every business. Only 39% of businesses have optimistic talent availability views, while 58% of employees see job skill requirements changing in the next five years, according to a PwC/World Economic Forum study. 

Seeing digital transformation as an ongoing change catalyst for people, processes, and technology adds context to these figures. This transformation engine propels and attracts the workforce. To meet the business goals of this change requires organizations to build a framework for upskilling, change management, and cultural support. By creating a holistic structure of internal training, hiring, development, and retention, businesses shape the digital transformation structure and success. 

Digital transformation technology is merely the catalyst for business transformation. It drives digital transformation strategies with the greatest potential for the future of the business, which can include:  

• Democratization of AI and increased automation 
• Hybrid and multi-cloud architecture 
• Data analytics 
• low code/no code platforms
• Cybersecurity, compliance, and zero trust frameworks 
• Customer data platforms (CDP) ERP, CRM, and DevOps 

Organizations want digital transformation to create efficient customer-centric processes and products driven by continuous IT and operations improvement. Most businesses start by focusing on automating end-to-end processes to deliver the greatest returns, which hinges on how best to: 

• Integrate these solutions into enterprise workflows 
• Redesign the end user experience 
• Speed up and simplify adoption 
• Enable a reskilling, upskilling, and talent attraction pipeline 
• Adjust operating models to maximize the business outcome ROI 

The skills gaps and finding digital-savvy talent will continue to be a long-term challenge. But developing a digital upskilling, training, and talent attraction/retention strategy is no easy feat. Organizations cannot overcome these challenges without addressing them as a fundamental part of the digital transformation implementation and outcomes blueprint. This provides a way to address the upskilling, training, and talent attraction challenges with effective solutions. 

Upskilling and Training: Challenges and Solutions

Businesses are in a constant race with technology to improve business processes and outcomes while needing to find ways for the workforce to keep up. This constant digital transformation can take many forms, but its common goals include: 

• Process/workflow improvement 
• Increased innovation 
• Faster and more agile production 
• Improved customer experience 
• Market/new market growth 

These goals will always include automation and intersect with the need for workforce/IT upskilling and attracting new talent. 

A lack of new technology workflow skills and a clear plan for upskilling, expert talent acquisition, and technology implementation often stem from IT, HR, and key department silos. These groups require a clear sharing and agreement on approaches, expectations, timelines, and outcomes. Without this level of integration between transformation implementation, change management and improved IT service management, organizations can see transformation failures like: 

• Poor outcomes with high cost and low ROI 
• Outright failure that jeopardizes future productivity, market positioning, and financial stability 

A plan to upskill, keep talent, and attract new talent with vital expertise is much bigger than just HR/recruitment. Major digital transformation initiatives negatively affect most employees and the IT organization if: 

• End-user tools and technologies are not fully used because of a lack of training and support monitoring  
• They lack a clear path for upskilling and professional development via integrated technology and tools  
• IT teams lack the specific expertise to implement, manage, upgrade, and monitor/improve end-user skill and adoption 

This is where tools and approaches like automation, AI/ML, and digital employee experience (DEX) can play a big part in digital transformation, upskilling, and talent retention/attraction. 

How Automation, AI and DEX Support Workforce Talent, Upskilling, and Digital Transformation

User friction and a lack of understanding of how to use tools and equipment can affect an employee's and IT team member’s desire to stay at a company. Organizations need robust assessment and feedback mechanisms into this friction. They can then assess how employees are interacting with the technology and pinpoint friction points that slow down processes and frustrate users.  

This plays a significant role in retention by helping the company, HR, and IT improve processes, help desk, and technology implementation/use in a targeted way. The goal is to foster a culture of growth and advancement by: 

• Increasing employee engagement and career growth options 
• Lowering downtime and frustration 
• Strengthening the employee/company bond and employee satisfaction 

DEX can play a big part in helping IT and business stakeholders understand employee technology, service and communication challenges. Its tools and governing frameworks:

• Process endpoint, application, and employee sentiment data in nearly real time
• Provide context for the organization by revealing actionable insights for implementation of automation, support, and employee engagement improvements 

This supports self-service portals, help desk, and automation/chatbot development that empowers: 

• End users and IT 
• Technology implementation  
• Asset management 
• Business outcomes 
• Internal training and upskilling  program development, continual learning and improvement monitoring 
• Identification of workforce and IT talent specialized digital skills based on transformation technology implementation, management, use, and upgrades  
• Cultivating a digital innovation culture capable of embracing ongoing digital advancements  

Automation and AI are a primary pathway for organizations to increase productivity and upskilling opportunities that foster improved business growth and outcomes. A recent PwC survey shows 68% of U.S. CEOs expect generative AI (GenAI) to increase employee productivity over the next year. 

While GenAI is likely to deliver greater support in IT upskilling, automation/RPA via low code/no code is the path for broader employee upskilling via AI democratization. Its ability to drive continuous learning and innovation makes it a cornerstone of upskilling and attracting/keeping talent. This form of AI and automation democratization equips the workforce with skills and new technologies that streamline processes and drive growth. 

Low code platforms enable drag-and-drop application development for workflow and process automation via building of new bot applications or enhancing existing ones. This citizen-led innovation is one way to promote upskilling that delivers practical business and career benefits.  

Organizations can’t do this overnight, and these low code platforms for RPA work best with IT and consulting oversite. The right balance frees IT teams to work on broad transformation and automation initiatives. It also can provide them with the time and structure to manage/monitor the workforce continuous learning pipeline. The organization can then identify and provide upskilling/advancement opportunities through the building of digital solutions that automate processes employees know. 

Bridging the Skills, Talent & Technology Gap with Solugenix

SMBs and enterprises across all sectors struggle with smoothly integrating people, processes and technology into the business culture in the digital transformation age. It takes a technology implementation, services, and support consulting partner to create a holistic plan for successful digital transformations. Solugenix leverages a long track record of success and expertise in these areas to partnerships with organizations of all sizes and sectors. Our approach is to help them navigate a digital transformation path that takes workforce and IT talent, expertise, upskilling, retention, and attraction into account.  

Planning and executing a digital transformation over months or years requires adapting and integrating the workforce into new processes, technologies, and workflows. IT teams shoulder the burden while also bringing talent and upskilling needs of their own to the process. Creating a transformation pathway enabled by IT, HR, and department head planning that provides training and upskilling opportunities leads to transformation success. 

This requires the ability to tap into a host of technology services and processes simultaneously to make digital transformation pay off in business outcomes. 

Digital transformation is about much more than just implementing automation, AI, cloud and other technologies. It takes a partner with the experience in preparing people and the pathways for upskilling, recruitment and overall success.  

Solugenix starts by ensuring that technologies provide long-term benefit to the business and the workforce. This is built on a foundation of understanding how digital transformation gives organizations and its people the control over their processes, workflows, and careers to adapt to a changing future. 

To learn how Solugenix can support your business and people in the age of digital transformation, click here to check our our service area page.  

In our next blog post, we’ll talk about how IT training, upskilling, and talent acquisition play a vital role in digital transformation success and ways to achieve it.