Topic 3: How DT leads to problem-solving situations and reskilling employees.
Based on an article in the Harvard Business Review, digital transformation is less about technology and more about people. You can pretty much buy any technology, but your ability to adapt to an even more digital future depends on developing the next generation of skills, closing the gap between talent supply and demand, and future-proofing your own and others’ potential. It’s really quite simple: the most brilliant innovation is irrelevant if we are not skilled enough to use it; and even the most impressive human minds will become less useful if they don’t team up with technology. The main implication is that when leaders think about investing in technology, they should first think about investing in the people who can make that technology useful.
As more and more industrial companies undergo digital transformation efforts, the need to upskill and reskill employees is becoming increasingly critical.
According to Vanessa Akhtar, principal at Kotter International, a firm in Cambridge, upskilling is defined as helping workers adapt their more traditional skills and capabilities to modern technologies that underpin digital transformation efforts, while reskilling provides the employees with new skills.
The issue of a skills gap caused by the introduction of more automation and AI in the workforce has been apparent for several years. A 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute found that by 2030, 14% of the global workforce — as many as 375 million workers will need to change their jobs or acquire new skills due to automation and AI.
Below you can find a report developed from Marsh & McLennan Companies entitled:
Engaging the workforce in digital transformation, a new model to enable your digital strategy
It provides case studies and analysis on collaborative technology design, augmenting human input with AI and many more themes.
