Digital Transformation Playbook: Your Employees

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation is one of the biggest buzzwords you’ll hear in business today. But what does it mean? Digital transformation is essentially rethinking how your business operates with respect to technology. However, it’s not just about adopting new tech tools. You also need to review your processes and how you do business. This will allow you to create a digital framework that enables growth and scale.

Digital transformation is a key component of any successful business, and one of the most important groups to focus on in this process are your employees. Whether you are looking to increase employee engagement and retention or simply wanting to ensure that your team has the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed in an ever-changing digital landscape, there are numerous strategies you can implement to help your employees thrive. Pursuing digital transformation will fail if everyone involved is not on board and adequately prepared. This starts from the top — you must have a C-level executive driving the ship.

Your Digital Transformation Team

For any digital transformation to be successful, there needs to be buy-in from the executive team. It is vital to create an internal committee to own the digital transformation process. This ownership will help employees stay in sync as this transformation takes place. The C-suite must lead such an endeavor from the top. Additionally, having key stakeholders from each essential function of your business as part of this committee helps break down silos and establish departmental ownership around key tasks.

With this committee, you can ensure that all employees are aligned under the company’s primary goal: digitally transforming the business to serve customers better. Any doubt may cause issues that can decrease employee adoption, prolong results, and potentially cause the initiative to fail.

To ensure all employees are on the same page with the company’s digital transformation goals, you should have everyone adequately trained so they understand these key areas:

1. The customer journey
2. How your business will operate to accommodate that journey
3. Their role, or what we call their “seat,” in that customer journey
4. How their role contributes to success

Right Seat and Right Resources

You should ensure employees have appropriate resources to reference – clear steps or actions when specific tasks arise – when they don’t understand the new processes. These resources are essential to appropriately manage your employee’s new workflow and help the digital transformation initiative evolve smoothly.

During this process, you may realize that some employees are not “in the right seat.” We define “wrong seat” as an employee who cannot meet the needs of their specific role. When this happens, it’s vital to either identify a new seat that the employee excels at. If there is not a seat available, you may need to consider a new hire. The employee should welcome a change in seats if they are definitely in the wrong seat. At the end of the day, if your employees are not happy in their seat, they are less likely to produce the results you need and are prone to churn.

Every employee at every business level must be involved in the digital transformation process. With that, you can guarantee that no gaps are left unseen and that transitions happen smoothly and efficiently.

How to Get Started on Your Digital Transformation

We get it. This journey can be daunting. But having a partner who knows what they are doing can help streamline moving towards digital transformation and avoid becoming one of the 83% of companies that fail. That’s exactly what we are here for.

Don’t be afraid to ask us questions. Reach out to us, and our team of growth enablement experts can share first-hand experience of what it truly takes to digitally transform your business right from the start.