Harnessing Talent Solutions to Drive Successful Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is an imperative for business growth, competitiveness, agility, and survival. It is also a major risk without the right talent in place to make sure it delivers business outcomes today and tomorrow. The question becomes, how do you find and cultivate the right people to steer digital transformation in the right direction? IT can start by building on the themes uncovered in an earlier blog post on talent solutions and digital transformation.

Let’s start the new year by starting with a narrower focus on building agile teams and addressing skills gaps in emerging technology roles. These two areas hold the key to achieving ongoing business gains through transformations in a constantly changing business landscape.

 Addressing Skills Gaps in Emerging Technology Roles

DevOps, cloud, AI/ML, automation, and other emerging technologies/methods share many points of intersection in the most popular digital transformation initiatives. They also share the need for a workforce where individuals bring emerging skills to ensure the transformations deliver return on investment (ROI).

While each of the varied outcomes are transformations of processes and workflows doing more with less (effort, time etc.) they also lead to ongoing transformations of the workforce. This is supported by real world statistics for IT and the broader workforce including:

• 5% of IT jobs are expected to experience high or moderate transformation due to AI, according to the ICT Workforce Consortium Report
• Nearly 70% of global CEO’s expect most of their workforce will need to develop new skills over the next three years due to generative AI, according to a recent PwC Survey

Skills gaps in these emerging technologies cut across the entire business and affect every department. This makes it easy for businesses to overlook the reality of digital transformation as the means to addressing skills gaps as well as the catalyst for business and operational change. Businesses now understand they must reimagine new strategies from proven approaches to close the skills gaps in these emerging technologies.

On-the-job Training Approaches to Drive Digital Transformation

Reskilling and upskilling are proven ways to address skills gaps. But digital transformations may require a new approach that combines transformation technologies with on-the-job training. This can be seen in the implementation of transformations involving areas like AI, automation, RPA and cloud, which can be more conducive to a holistic melding of the two.

One example would be low code/no code platforms, which can serve to close skills gaps while supporting digital transformations once businesses understand its myths and realities. The right low code platform solutions implemented at the right time can be the catalyst for citizen developer training via RPA and automation initiatives.

These should include the right staff members across departments along with IT personnel needing upskilling to advance people, processes, and technology as part of an ongoing culture of excellence. When organizations put these strategies in place, they can reap the rewards of attracting skilled talent by showing successes of emerging technology implementations that also advance the opportunities and skills of its broader workforce.

Generative AI tools and RPA solutions can help employees answer process questions and learn new skills while helping them to improve prompts. They also serve the broader need for skills gap analysis. Business can use tools like ChatGPT (and other established large language models) to input employee performance and certification information to identify:

• Skills gaps for specific people and departments based on transformation initiatives
• What training they will need based on the same criteria
• Best approaches and sources for training and strategies to make it part of the business culture (from LinkedIn courses to vendor training programs)
• A process for generating customized training content based on individual needs
• Analysis of training/transformation performance data
• Crucial employee feedback that shapes all the above

This can all become part of an organization’s culture of improvement and success to optimize training programs, close skills gaps, and ensure successful digital transformation rollouts.

Support for Mentorship Programs

The same digital transformation tools and platforms discussed earlier can help identify mentors and mentees based on various criteria, such as backgrounds, interests, and what they want out of that relationship (practical incentives), which all support:

• Closing skills gaps
• Retention through job growth, pay structures, and satisfaction
• Increased operational efficiency based on a culture of innovation
• Identifying where employees want to go in their careers
• Aligning these mentorship approaches with upskilling, training, reskilling and digital transformation initiatives

Organizations are increasingly leveraging upskilling/reskilling programs and AI-focused training to equip their teams with the competencies required to adapt. Employees who embrace experiential learning with AI are more likely to develop complementary soft skills and earn promotions. But training alone is not enough to counter the severe talent shortages that many industries face.

Amid competitive hiring landscapes, department managers, CIOs and CTOs need to rethink their talent strategies. A lack of skilled professionals delays transformation project timelines and stifles innovation. To combat these challenges, businesses must focus on future-proofing their workforce. This involves not only recruiting for in-demand roles—like AI engineers, cloud architects, and cybersecurity specialists—but also fostering an environment that supports continuous learning and skill renewal.

It often takes outside support to develop programs that combine robust upskilling initiatives, innovative recruitment practices, and effective retention strategies with transformations. The right partner helps position organizations for sustainable digital transformation by bridging the skills gaps and building agile teams.

Building Agile Teams

Building agile teams that can quickly adapt to evolving demands is essential for successful digital transformation. Bu the concepts of building these teams within the business should be addressed enterprise wide rather than just departmentally. The same on-the-job-training approaches already discussed can also go deeper in ways that support building those agile teams using the following methods.

Continuous Learning Approaches

To foster agility, companies must rethink traditional workforce structures. This starts with continuous learning and staffing programs tailored to emerging technologies like ServiceNow, Salesforce, SAP, and Microsoft platforms. By embedding upskilling and reskilling into their organizational DNA, businesses empower employees to remain relevant and contribute to evolving digital initiatives.

Apprenticeships & Mentoring Solutions

Apprenticeship programs can work across a wide variety of fields that encompass digital transformation technologies and can also play a pivotal role in building agile teams. Mid-market companies may lack the resources to create programs like IBM’s New Collar initiative. They can still find staffing partners capable of helping them find candidates by:

• Prioritizing skills over traditional degrees
• Opening doors to a broader and more diverse talent pool
• Fostering the building of agile teams with the skills to support transformation initiatives and deliver ROI through their use

Tech Layoff Recruitment Targeting

Increasing rounds of tech layoffs can be a net positive for employers and skilled employees laid off from large tech companies. Organizations can recruit these skilled and displaced workers to:

• Fill emerging technology roles
• Close skills gap through mentoring
• Provide a deeper knowledge base to make successful transformations more likely to deliver ROI

Overcoming the challenges in harnessing these talent solutions for a successful digital transformation requires a partner capable of turning that complexity into a strategy. The goal is to bring it all together in a way that holistically looks at what people, processes and technology need. This creates a business culture of innovation capable of adapting no matter what transformations the future holds.

Bringing it All Together With Solugenix 

SMBs to global enterprises see the complexity of achieving successful digital transformations but often lack the insights from successful implementations to build and follow a roadmap. Solugenix has been a partner to countless businesses and sectors in making this a reality for over 50 years to support:

• Navigating the complexities of talent acquisition, development, and retention to build resilient and future-ready teams
• Addressing skills gaps in emerging technologies to creating agile teams that drive innovation
• Aligning digital transformation initiatives with technology solution vendors and implementation experts while simultaneously supporting needed training and upskilling efforts for success.

An example would be ensuring practical strategies for successful digital transformations working in concert with the implementation of robust and advanced RPA/automation-driven onboarding processes. These all work together to drive a culture of innovation, transformation and ongoing business success.

Solugenix provides tailored solutions to ensure your digital transformation initiatives are successful. Agility demands adaptability at an organizational level, which requires integrating workforce planning into strategic IT initiatives, anticipating future skill needs, and linking workforce performance to business outcomes. By cultivating an agile workforce, companies can stay ahead of disruptions and thrive in the digital era.

To learn how Solugenix can help you create a sustainable talent ecosystem that adapts to change, delivers value, and empowers your organization to thrive in a digital transformation world, click here.