Embracing digital fluency for agility

Why are companies struggling to recover from the change brought by Covid-19 —

the need to work remotely, service customers remotely, engage differently?

The answer is there’s more to “going digital” than just implementing new technology. Human resource (HR) leaders need to focus on five key areas, among them accelerating learning to build workforce resilience. But to truly drive transformation, they need to test for and facilitate digital fluency

— it unleashes creativity, agility and the workforce you need for the digital realm.

Amid the crises, many companies have had to reduce their workforces. Others are looking urgently for new skills. How can HR leaders better navigate workforce shifts and build resilience? Accenture identified five focus areas: understanding what skills are needed, identifying skills gaps and, perhaps most important —

creating the ability for people to learn rapidly to change the trajectory of their career.

To accelerate individuals’ learning curves so they can become more productive, companies need to:

● Tap into human potential. Don’t underestimate the human potential to continually learn and grow, and let them opt in and choose their own learning.

● Address the most critical skills-set gaps within the organisation. Leverage agile platforms to quickly develop curated learning pathways and facilitate learning networks.

● Close the gap on skill adjacencies through accelerated learning.

Organisations need innovative solutions for disruptive times. Resilience doesn t only address the now, it needs’to

be long term. Strategies need to keep as many people healthy, safe and employed as possible “in the now” with an eye to equipping people with new skills for the future. Plans need to be fit for purpose today but capable of evolving as the global health and economic environment changes.

By building rapid response capabilities, companies can build a new future of work beyond this crisis, one fuelled by the courage to try new things.

Business leaders typically think in terms of jobs or roles, rather than underlying core skills. But, skills are the new currency and will be the key to rebuilding resilient workforces in the future. And here’s the challenge: closing these skills gaps require digital fluency.

Digital fluency allows people to build on technological foundations and unleash newfound ways of working.

How do you measure it and test for it? Digital fluency is a framework measured by your digital workforce’s technology quotient (TQ) + digital operations + digital foundations + digital leadership and culture.

Accenture’s research found digital fluency is the lynchpin to unlocking workforce agility. Our digital fluency framework predicts and explains 54% of a worker’s ability to be agile. And organisations most digitally fluent can capture strong returns in innovation, people experience and customer value because their workforce has learned to be agile.

Achieving this takes some doing. Business leaders — and workers, too — are struggling to navigate this new technologyenabled world of work. To be successful, workers need to have access to digital tools and training — but also leadership and cultural support — to unlock their full potential and ingenuity. I believe digital fluency is the missing ingredient in many digital transformation efforts.

In many cases, it’s not the technology itself that is holding back an individual, but the lack of digital infrastructure, culture, leadership and skills, which are required to thrive alongside technologies. This digital fluency framework is a smart way to plan a path forward.