Catalyst | Digital
B
uilding digital
skills used to be
the preserve of the
IT department.
But as we enter a
new decade, and
the commercial
environment shifts at an alarming
rate, every single employee will need
to be tech savvy, to a certain degree,
and to grow comfortable with the
digital transformation happening
around them.
Yet for many organisations,
keeping up with changing customer
and client expectations and trying
to meet challenging targets means
they’re scrambling to recruit digital
teams, while ensuring their staff are
ready for the new world of work.
“The structural changes we’re
seeing now are the biggest in our
lifetime,” says Neil Jones, regional
head for Asia Pacific at Alexander
Mann Solutions. “There’s a skills
mismatch between what’s on the
market and organisations’ readiness
for digital.”
Businesses face disruption from
multiple sources – the rise of artificial
intelligence (AI) and automation
threatens to change the shape of the
workforce, millennials have different
expectations for their careers, and
there’s unprecedented growth in
contingent and freelance workers
as people seek greater flexibility and
independence.
Because disruption is coming from
all sides, employers’ digital skills
strategies must be multi-faceted
too, argues Jones. “The winners
will be the organisations that adopt
a total workforce strategy,” he says.
“You can’t fix the problem with one
approach in isolation; you need to
integrate approaches rather than
looking at them in silos. When it
comes to whether you buy, borrow
or build talent, you can’t afford not
to do it all.”
The challenge for organisations is to
work out how best to balance their
approach to digital talent. George
Zarkadakis, digital lead at consulting
firm Willis Towers Watson, advises
looking at skills needs through
three lenses.
“There’s the digital transformation
lens – the technical skills you’ll need
to build systems, AI and data analysis;
there’s the customer-focus lens (for
HR, your employees); and there’s the
digital workplace lens – the tools you
use to collaborate in your day job.”
Reskilling staff
He argues that leaders need to
break down job profiles and use
data to predict how these jobs
might change over the next three
to five years. “Break them down
into tasks,” he advises. “Which
elements are repetitive and could be
automated? Where are you investing
in technology such as chatbots? How
“The winners will be the
organisations that adopt a
total workforce strategy”
will this affect people in existing
teams and how do you reform jobs
so they can do higher value things?”
In many cases, it will be possible to
reskill employees in anticipation
of new digital requirements, or at
least minimise the need to recruit
high-demand skills externally.
For global IT services company
Atos, reskilling is a crucial element
of its skills strategy: the business
has an ambitious target to do 80%
D
of its hiring internally, and to
retrain or redeploy staff rather
than make people redundant.
Underpinning this strategy is a
razor-sharp focus on the digital
skills it will prioritise and a
flexible talent-mobility platform
that means it can move employees
around the organisation as the
business requires.
For the past two years, Atos has
run a programme called FutureFit
around digital skills growth. “We
look at where the growth is in the
market, where we see skills changing
and what we need to be ready for.
It means we’re well positioned
to take advantage of growth,”
explains Alison Devenish, head of
workforce management.
Employees can opt into pathways
around five key skills needs: hybrid
cloud, digital workplace, cyber
security, AI and DevOps (which
speeds up the software development
process); within each pathway
they have access to subject matter
experts and webinars on the latest
developments so they can keep their
knowledge up to date. There are also
coaching hubs and career cafés where
staff can explore different pathways if
they want to take another direction.
There has been a shift in focus away
from ‘hard’ skills and experience to
attitudes and behaviours. Atos has
worked with the consulting arm of
Alexander Mann Solutions to build a
matching matrix called Find Your Fit,
combining behavioural psychology
with subject matter experts’
digital experience.
Employees take part in an
interactive video interview to
see if they’re ‘ready now’ for a
particular skills path or ‘ready with
development’. Those who are ready
now can go onto the company’s
talent-mobility platform and tag
their skills, which means they can
then be matched with available
Issue 4 - 2020
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