You were completely over hearing about digital transformation 4 years ago. I get it, I was too. And maybe some of that was because, for all the B2B marketing hype, the pace of adoption and deployment of differentiated digital experiences felt deliberate but plodding.
Now, after Covid-19, digital transformation has evolved from tired corporate speak to a get there now or die proposition for firms of all sizes across industries. Perhaps the most eye-popping report on the topic comes from Twilio where they found that “Covid-19 was the digital accelerant of the decade” and that “COVID-19 accelerated companies’ digital communications strategy by an average of 6 years while 97% of enterprise decision makers believe the pandemic sped up their company’s digital transformation.” Let that sink in for a second. SIX. YEARS. When’s the last time you had to deliver on a timeline like that?
As a result, companies are reallocating spend to boost digital budgets to new heights, a good and necessary first step to accomplish big things on a severely truncated timeline. But all the budget in the world won’t get you there six years early with a team that was selected and scaled to operate on a pre-Covid-19 delivery schedule. Gartner estimates that the pace of digital transformation has sped up by about 5 years on average and shared that “As the COVID-19 response accelerates the speed and scale of digital transformation, a lack of digital skills could jeopardize companies with misaligned talent plans”. What should also be concerning is that demand for digital skills has expanded into virtually all roles within the enterprise so the market for digitally savvy talent in all functions will continue to tighten.
So how do you ensure that your organization has the right number of people with the right skills at all levels to get there six years early? First and foremost, you will need to align post-Covid-19 business strategy to talent strategy. That means engaging in strategic workforce planning including:
- Supply Analysis: Examining your existing workforce to understand how well staffing levels, digital skills and organizational design support your new business strategy
- Demand Analysis: Cataloguing incremental and different types of work needed to execute digital initiatives on a post-Covid-19 accelerated timeline
- Gap Analysis: Identifying gaps the between current workforce in terms of headcount, skills and new roles needed to execute current strategy.
- Workforce Plan Development: Update organizational charts with any roles to be added, eliminated or transitioned. Prioritize and create a timeline for new hires, transfers and role eliminations. Identify talent sources for incremental roles – how many can be developed and transitioned or promoted internally and how many need to be sourced externally? Create a team of x-functional stakeholders to work with human resources to administer and monitor the plan.
- Execution and Measurement: Determine what metrics to establish to help the team monitor and track progress. Establish cadence for progress reviews and for making changes to the plan as internal and external conditions dictate.
Organizations that win the race to delivering a 2026 digital experience in their sector will be the ones that take the next step in workforce analysis, planning and transformation. HR teams and C-suites will need to step up their games in talent appraisal and workforce planning that too often turn out to be rote, annual check the box exercises. In the end, there can’t be digital transformation without earnest, innovative organizational transformation.
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