Developing Digital Skills in the Workforce

The extent to which a company adapts to digital transformation is one of the most important factors affecting the success of that company. Companies that support their business styles by adapting to technological innovations can keep up with the age with a flexible and successful digital transformation program specific to the workforce and can get ahead in commercial competition by adapting to innovations more easily. In companies that receive digital transformation expertise support, which includes long-term planning, systemization and continuous support with business-specific analyses, digital transformation brings superior performance with a commercial infrastructure that faces the future. Along with this infrastructure, the employees being equipped with digital skills also enables the creation of a holistic transformation culture. Digital skills mean the adoption of sustainable and long-term learning that is open to innovation, rather than the application of specific digital learnings or achievements. A company’s integrated digital infrastructure and the digital skills it provides to its workforce holistically constitute the company’s understanding of digitalization.

Digital transformation has transformed the way of doing business in all areas. For this reason, regardless of the field, employees need to digitalize their workforce and companies need to focus on the competence development of their employees and see this as part of corporate transformation. According to the research data of the World Economic Forum, the qualifications needed in the labor force are changing. In the Forum’s Future Competencies Report, it is stated that 40 per cent of the competencies used today will change in 2025. If we do not count the year we are in the last months, only 3 years later, today’s workforce will have changed considerably. However, the current data on the subject suggests that employees are not prepared for this. According to the global data of Salesforce research company, most of the employees think that their jobs are insufficient for the future. More than 75 per cent of the global workforce (80 per cent in the UK) is made up of employees who do not feel prepared to work in a digital world. 45 per cent of respondents said they “feel overwhelmed by the pace of technological change”.

In corporate life, employees are categorized by various human resources terms. White collar and blue collar were the most frequently used and perhaps the most familiar terms. In recent years, the terms “golden collar”, where knowledge is at the forefront, and “new collar” for some skill-based jobs that do not require higher education, and “metal collar” for the workforce in the business world of robots have been added to these terms. As the business world evolved into digital transformation, the rapid rise of digitalization gave birth to the term “digital collar” according to human resources experts. All these terms, which we may hear different derivatives over time, mean that a number of skills and equipment need to be developed for different workforces in various business lines. However, the “digital skills” required by the digital age in all sectors, in all working areas, have now become the qualities sought in almost every employee.

In order for employees to develop digital skills in the workforce, it is critical that they receive training support, participate in workshops and develop their digital skills in the workforce with various application solutions and adapt to the specific reflections of technological innovations on the workforce. At this point, “digital skills” should not be evaluated in a narrow scope such as “knowing some digital programmes”; it should be evaluated in terms of developing and maintaining an approach. As technology develops, it is of great importance to develop this approach in order to adapt the ways of doing business to it.

Business processes are constantly digitalizing and adapting to technological innovations. Artificial intelligence, automation, internet of things, EDI solutions, robotic process automation (RPA) and similar solutions can be managed in an integrated manner. In this way, it enables the processing and management of big data coming from artificial intelligence technology to guide the operation and business decisions. Transforming the workforce with technology also supports employees to use their skills more efficiently. Therefore, equipping organisations’ business processes with integrated digital solutions for digital collar workers has become a very valuable business investment for the development of the digital workforce.

The development of digital skills should be perceived holistically and should not be considered independent from the organisation. In the global business world where the concepts of “Big Resignation” and “Silent Resignation” are discussed, encouraging employees to develop their digital skills through digital transformation supports employee engagement and positive feelings about the organization.

Developing digital skills is not just about training in a set of digital programmes or acquiring knowledge on digitalization. It is possible to develop digital skills by continuously learning and renewing in order to be capable of continuous and endless digital transformation and related qualifications. At this point, it is important to realize that it is about developing a culture. Therefore, this should be adopted as an approach and understanding that should be internalized rather than a target or a hardware element. It should be perceived as a never-ending process with changing conditions.

For organizations that want to adapt to the continuous development of technology and the dizzying pace of digital transformation in the business world, encouraging their employees, offering solutions or rewarding adaptation in this sense will contribute greatly to the cumulative development of synergy. At the same time, in terms of internal communication, it contributes to the improvement of communication between employees and decision-makers and the adaptation of corporate culture to the era. A stance that supports and embraces this innovation serves the organisation’s reputation management in the long term with positive effects.