Automation and digitalization have changed the very nature of work, and there’s no one more affected than employees. A company may have a good digital transformation strategy, but if employees fail to use tools that support the strategy, the initiative will eventually fail.
Most employees want digital solutions, and 88 percent [1] think the solutions play a vital role in their work experience. While it's essential for digital transformation to be customer-focused, employees still need to be front and center.
What exactly does digital transformation mean for employees?
Digital transformation for employees refers to the integration of digital technologies into various aspects of an organization to enhance productivity, efficiency, and collaboration among its workforce. By leveraging cutting-edge tools, software, and innovative strategies, businesses can empower their employees with the capabilities needed to thrive in a digital-centric world.
Key Benefits of digital transformation for Employees
The implementation of digital transformation in the right way can greatly impact the lives of employees. It brings about several significant benefits in the workplace, including increased productivity, improved efficiency in resource management, and a culture of collaboration across departments. Here are the top 5 benefits of digital transformation on employees:
- Increased productivity and efficiency
- Access to digital tools and technologies
- Improved data accuracy
- Employee engagement
- Collaboration
Increased productivity and efficiency
Digital transformation allows employees to focus more on high-value work and manage resources more efficiently. Teams can use digital tools to troubleshoot on their own, freeing IT to focus on more complex issues.
Digitized processes are also streamlined and less risky. They prevent human error by eliminating manual, time-consuming tasks and human inefficiencies. The processes save employees time, decrease waste, and reduce overhead costs.
Access to digital tools and technologies
Tech shapes how employees perform their work and perceive their roles. Giving them access to transformative digital technologies can boost their capabilities and improve their skills gradually. Even employees working remotely can collaborate efficiently with digital tools. Adopting digital tools streamlines digital processes fosters a collaborative environment, and drives growth.
Improved data accuracy
Collecting robust data from diverse sources and analyzing it helps companies adjust their business strategies to suit changing environments. They can track important metrics, have centralized storage, and turn analyzed data into actionable insights. Digital transformation refines data strategy, data management processes, and analytics to enable improvements based on accurate data insight. It aligns and refines data to support intelligent decision-making across the business.
Employee engagement
Technology can help organizations attract, engage, and retain top talent. Research shows that organizations with good onboarding processes improve new hire retention by 82%. Involving employees in digital transformation educates and empowers them. Empowered employees are more engaged, work harder, and are more loyal to the company. They deliver faster, better, and more efficiently executed outcomes.
A digital platform ensures that all employees, from upper management to frontline workers, are connected. This allows for clear communication and aligns employees with the overall company vision, strategies, and even company culture.
Collaboration
Communication is an important aspect of an effective work environment. With the help of digital tools, employees can share files, set up conference calls, send messages, and create online forums to keep lines of communication open at all times. The right digital transformation solutions can bridge the gap and eliminate inefficiencies by enabling employees to collaborate efficiently both synchronously and asynchronously. They can also keep stakeholders and clients appraised at all times and avoid the chaos that comes with delays, changes, and disruptions to work.
How digital transformation changes the lives of employees
Every forward-thinking company has attempted to transform its policies, culture, and technology to reflect the changing needs of employees and customers. But according to PwC's 2022 Digital IQ survey [2], only 56% of organizations have trained their employees to use new tools and processes.
There’s a gap between technology adoption and usage. This can be solved by changing the organizational culture and maintaining it during transformation. By strategizing digital transformation as a cultural change, companies can ensure employees focus on aspects of their work that can be streamlined.
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Digital transformation to improve the employee experience
When an organization perfects the employee experience, it can generate 25% [3] more profits and boost innovation and customer satisfaction. But this is only possible if employees embrace digital transformation and the changes that come with it. Here’s what must happen for digital transformation to be effective.
Employees must embrace technology
Digital Transformation technologies allow employees to make their business processes more efficient. Tools and platforms that enable workflow management, project management, and process automation can go a long way in optimizing the business. But they can only be beneficial if there’s company-wide adoption. Employees must embrace digital transformation and become ambassadors. Digital ambassadors encourage change within an enterprise and show others the benefits of change.
Improve agility
Digital transformation for employees is primarily centered around change. It involves employees embracing new tools, adopting new work methods, and developing new habits. The level of ease or difficulty employees experience in adapting to these changes depends on how the transformation is implemented.
Agility is key—not only does it improve efficiency and workflows, but it also creates an improved work environment. Agile teams are well-equipped to deal with all the internal and external challenges they face.
A deep understanding of organizational goals
Understanding organizational goals keep employees motivated. They can translate the digital vision into tangible business outcomes they can relate to and work on. Once employees know their goals, it becomes easy to identify the key drivers that will help achieve them. For instance, if the company is undergoing a digital transformation to boost customer retention, employees can identify what drives customer retention and focus their efforts on creating opportunities.
Enabling employees with the perfect digital tools and technologies
Process automation
Business process automation drives productivity by reducing the time employees take to complete repetitive tasks. They can redirect precious time to more meaningful, business-critical activities. Automation also goes a long way in eliminating the need for human intervention when processes are relatively predictable, significantly cutting operational costs and eliminating errors.
Application development
With the demand for business apps on the rise, companies today are realizing the need to build them in-house. An application development platform helps teams build the apps they need while adopting a wide range of methodologies such as low-code, RAD, or agile. Concepts like citizen development have become increasingly popular. An application development platform enables citizen developers (or employees with extensive subject matter expertise but little to no coding experience) to get involved in app development. This ensures that the solutions being built are kept closest to the business problem.
Low-code and no-code
The cost of building commercial apps through traditional methods is typically high. This is because traditional app building is code intensive while being heavily reliant on IT teams for support. Low-code and no-code application development platforms empower employees to become citizen developers and build apps with little to no coding expertise. This eliminates the need for business users to rely on IT teams for their app development needs.
Project Management
Project management is typically an expensive affair since it requires a lot of resources and has a lot of moving parts. A project management tool can help teams plan, manage, and execute work in order to meet project requirements on time. They compartmentalize complex projects, prioritize tasks, track progress, and collaborate efficiently. The tools help employees to maximize resources and speed up the achievement of targets.
Enhancing Digital Transformation for Your Employees with Kissflow
Executing digital transformation for employees requires a proper plan to make them adapt to the change.
For companies that want to thrive in the digital era, digital transformation is no longer an option. As companies gear up for digital transformation and the changes that come with it, it becomes increasingly important to choose the right solution.
Digital transformation platform is a perfect solution to help you fast-track your journey. The comprehensive tool converges work across departments and teams while optimizing processes, maximizing productivity, and keeping employees engaged while maintaining control over operational costs.
Read More on Digital Transformation:
1. What is Digital Transformation? Definition & Types
2. Why does Digital Transformation Fail?
3. Enabling Digital Transformation with Cloud Technology
4. 9 Digital Transformation trends to follow in 2023
5. Gartner's insights on Digital Transformation market growth
