Digital Fluency: Addressing the Growing Skills Gap

Businesses that fully embrace digital transformation are reaping the benefits. In addition to reducing costs and increasing efficiencies, these companies are redefining and reinventing the customer value proposition to strengthen their competitive foothold and disrupt their industries in the process.

And their IT organizations are leading the way. One critical factor these high-performing IT organizations have in common is their laser-like focus on building the core soft skills required to support the business and continually move further up the IT Maturity Curve. 

But in a hyper-digital world that’s changing at a relentless pace, the pressure to stay up-to-date with technical and core skills is mounting, and so is the pressure to retain top talent. Across the more than 3,500 diverse IT organizations O&A has worked with, leaders are increasingly concerned about whether or not they have the in-house skills and talent to support these critical business transformation efforts.

A ‘digitalized terrain awash in emerging technologies’

That’s how Gartner recently described today’s business environment. While IT is leading the way on digital transformation, in this ever-changing digital climate, everyone across the organization needs to be able to embrace, understand, and use digital technologies in their work — because as McKinsey’s report on the future of work in America puts it, “The day-to-day nature of work could change for nearly everyone as intelligent machines become fixtures in the American workplace.”

Closing the digital skills gap is now a top priority as companies scramble to play catch up. They realize this widening gap is not only going to hold back their digital transformation efforts; it will hold back talented employees who lack the necessary skills to adapt to the new realities of work. 

The upshot of all this is a growing emphasis on building digital fluency. True digital fluency involves understanding the entire digital landscape and being able to appropriately and confidently select technology to solve a business problem. Being digitally fluent often means being an effective communicator who’s competent at pushing forward an implementation and encouraging adoption.

Put simply, people who are digitally fluent are able to understand and use digital technology while possessing the key soft skills necessary to drive business functions. 

Digital Fluency: How does your organization stack up?

It’s important to design your digital fluency initiatives within the context of your current capabilities, strengths, and gaps. The IT Skill Builder platform is a great place to start for evaluating workforce data, in-demand skills, and existing talent to get a clear picture of your digital readiness. It also includes a comprehensive library of microlearning modules that specifically target these areas, from “Managing Big Data in Your Organization” to “Creating a Customer Service Culture.” 

Now’s the time to get serious about digital fluency! Let us know if you need help navigating this terrain.

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