You can compare modern digital transformation to the industrial revolution. Digital technologies have provided companies more opportunities to boost performance and efficiency that would not have been imagined a few years ago. But a looming skills gap is forcing companies to reconsider how they source and develop their IT staff in order to stay afloat in this digital tidal wave of change.
IT companies offering software outsourcing are faced with a disruption that is nothing short of historic. Digital technologies are part of the corporate norm affecting every facet of organizational behavior. And, the digital transformation is just a beginning. By 2018, 50% of all business process jobs will vanish, and digital jobs will increase by 500%.
The statistics around an organization's ability to manage the digital demand are bleak:
- Nearly 40% of workers lack some critical skills and 14% have no skills at all in the European Union.
- In the United States, around 60 million people are jobless due to lack of digital skills, and around 20% of American adults do not have the Internet at work, home or school or by smartphone.
- In the United Kingdom, six million citizens have never try their hands on internet, and 9.5 million have insufficient digital skills.
Digital Expansion generates a skills gap
Technological progress will continue to prevail with or without the consent of slow-to-adopt organizations. Instead of resisting the digital transformation, organizations and staff employees should prepare themselves strategically for a skill set that will perpetually evolve and transform.
For instance, on-field teams are now able to collaborate and innovate in real-time, and companies can perform big data analysis to determine which talent is at risk of leaving. Companies that don’t know how to embrace this transformation will suffer as the supply and demand for IT talent grows greater and greater.
With this in mind, consider the following tips when evaluating your current and future IT workforce hiring and development strategy.
Never Quit Developing
If you want to be master perpetual change, you must consider development and learning as a never-ending cycle of continuous enhancement. After 10 years, your college degree will no longer be sufficient to develop the skills required for building a lifelong career.
Individuals need to understand the fact that if they stop learning, they will risk their career. Companies that are unwilling to become learning organizations will not survive in the digital transformation era.
Organizations can no longer adopt only a top-down approach for development. They have to emphasize on empowering their employees to develop themselves and each other by offering them with the framework, tools, and autonomy.
Design a Sustainable Strategy
If you want to make people learn about digital transformation, you need to design a corporate development strategy. For such strategy, managers need to focus on five “C’s” or five key characteristics.
- Complimentary
A development program should include skills that are complementary, so that technical skills, behavioral skills, and functional skills can work together.
- Concurrent
Digital skill sets should be addressed concurrently.
- Contextualized
The skill sets required for digital literacy rely on and change as per the specific context in which they are applied. It is a delicate interplay and mastery of all skill groups in distinct contexts. For instance, if you know how to drive a car in all environments, you wil be considered as good driver.
- Collaboration
You need to consider the changing nature of learner expectations while designing any development strategy to optimize engagement. There is a requirement of change in the teaching process. You should know what to teach and how to teach if you are to engage learners.
- Continuous
Digital tools get old sooner after their release. They evolve and update new features regularly. If any training program is used to fill this digital skills gap, learning will be continuous.
Digital transformation is evolving all business aspects and coming up with it unprecedented opportunity for agility, innovation, flexibility, and growth. Software outsourcing companies that don’t use digital practices of cyber security will not be able to understand the advantages of digital transformation and may get burnt in the process.
Have something to say about digital transformation? Share your thoughts and tell other readers what do you think about this change and how this change can transform IT?
Author Bio: James Warner is working as senior web developer at NexSoftSys, a web application & Software outsourcing in USA & India. Writes about Emergency technology, Innovative quotes, Social Media News and online marketing.
