Ensure Your IT Force's Learning Keeps Pace with Digital Transformation

The global rush to digital transformation continues to make employee learning critical in terms of technology consumption and business outcomes. The greater degree of digital transformation causes the greater need for continuously improved learning opportunities. Greater digital transformation’s impact on business produces greater demand for revised learning strategies.

The introduction to Dell Technologies’ Realizing 2030 report states:

Emerging tech today is not only creating new possibilities for how people and jobs find each other more seamlessly, they are also enabling new ways of working together. These advancements in technologies will require new skills and capabilities for workers to excel in the 2030 work environment.

With updated data, this article validates current and future realities for digital transformation and the disruptions it causes. We then explore specific, unique learning strategy needs it produces and how companies can respond with an effective upskilling and reskilling strategy. Finally, we will examine a specific response that provides effective means for increased, improved employee training.

Digital Transformation: Current and Future State

The Dell Technologies’ Digital Transformation Index: 2020 reports that in 2020 80% of the companies surveyed fast-tracked their digital programs. World Economic Forum reported that by 2022, 54% of all employees will need significant reskilling.

Digital transformation is a full-scale strategy as every industry and product now use digital technologies to provide better outcomes and experiences that affect:

• Products and services
• Customers and customer satisfaction
• Operations and operating expenses
• Employee performance

As digital transformation produces disruptive innovation, it requires evolving skills for the workforce. There is widespread agreement that in virtually every industry investment can not be only on the technology but must also cover employee learning and development.

McKinsey & Co reported in January 2021, the points by which CEOs should mark their organization’s digital progress

Figure 1

We want to draw your attention to marker #5: top technical talent. The report offers that Tech talent includes individuals with expertise in data engineering, analytics, design and user experience, and core technology.

Attracting such talent may be the first step; however, providing learning and development that continually advances their expertise and motivation is critical to keeping them and having them keep pace with technologies. A key measurement of this marker: the percentage of employees completing digital trainings.

For the three decades that digital transformation has had an identity, its accompanying disruptions have become common knowledge. These disruptions occur in

Technology	Data	Security	Analytics	Workplace
Storage	Integration	Collaboration	Competition	Workforce

                                                                             Figure 2

Rather than separate disruptions in those areas, the disruptions now take on an integrated, sweeping effect.

Chief Executive reported in 2020 that technology innovation was producing disruptions across industries, no longer in specific sectors or functions. Today Chief Executive, 2022 reports that the combination of disruption and the challenge to find or develop the right talent are “shaking executive’s confidence”. More disruption than before and a greater shortage of the “right” talent add up to a significant obstacle to overcome.

Our new data from IDC’s 2022 Predictions makes clear that digitalization will continue at an increasing rate: “Direct digital transformation (DX) investment growth rates are accelerating, up to 16.5% CAGR for 2022-2024.” That is a one-point increase over the rate predicted for 2020-2023. Never have a majority of enterprise organizations (54%) had an enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy.

Digital Transformation: New Skills Required

Dell’s Digital Transformation Index: 2020 reports that when asked what enabled their transformation acceleration, 41% credited “the right in-house digital skills”. Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Outlook 2022 reported as recently as 2021, that 60% of the businesses gave upskilling and reskilling high priorities, optimistically forecasting they can develop the workforce skills necessary in the future.

However, that same report determined that “few organizations are fully prepared to develop those future skillsets and most organizations don’t have learning strategies to drive the innovation or technology that makes reskilling scalable.” The ability to develop the necessary skillsets depends upon

• Identifying skills gaps
• Making skills recommendations
• Delivering personalized reskilling/upskilling programs

Given the complexity and rapid change rate of digital transformation, those three factors are even more vital.

Currently, three trends are impacting technological skills:

• Expiration of once human skills now performed better, cheaper, and faster by technology
• Evolution of skills that enable employees to work with higher levels of technology
• Introduction of new skills thanks to new technologies and advancements

As early as 2018, the World Economic Forum projected the global need to upskill or reskill at least 54% of the employee population. One of the seven key “digital pivots” necessary for a business’s digital maturity listed by Deloitte (2020), is

Digital savvy: Retooling training programs to focus on digital competencies, and staffing teams through flexible, contingent talent models to rapidly access in-demand skill sets and flex the organization’s workforce based on business need.

Skills development that will satisfy demands from the digital revolution relies upon successful identification and determination of what skills are needed. Dell’s Realizing 2030 report states:

There is little debate that the pace of change is accelerating—and with it, the rate at which people acquire the ever-evolving skills and knowledge they need to execute their jobs. Yet, our ability to prepare today’s learners for tomorrow’s work is hampered by a lack of shared understanding of what people will need to know to be successful in the 2030 work environment.

Digital Transformation: Steps to Satisfy the Skills Demand

Dell Technologies Education Services Learning Accelerator Program (LAP) offers businesses integrated tactics – needs-analysis, problem-solving, and consultation – that work best in your culture by accomplishing essential skills development and skills improvement to meet the digital revolution. A Learning Architect from The Learning Accelerator Program will provide a customized learning strategy for every key role, involving deployed and planned Dell Technologies solutions as well as non-product industry-standard training, such as IT-as-a-Service.

As a top-down consultative approach, LAP works with business leaders to correlate business goals and learning needs, relevant to the education of current and new workers. By interactive interviews with business leads and stakeholders, the LAP identifies the employee transformation elements aligned with long-term business goals.

The Learning Architect uses anecdotal information from the interviews to develop a customized skill survey that considers business goals and learning culture. The survey results identify skills gaps confronting what the business wants to achieve. The Learning Architect then creates a report with specific recommendations of learning paths and modalities that can satisfy those goals. These customized engagement steps include:

• A training curriculum and delivery modalities
• Individual learning paths per skill and skill set
• Training delivery plan (calendar-based) including courses, people, outcomes, and cost

The Learning Architect pulls data every three months to determine that the plan is being followed, the learners are satisfied, and the KPIs are being fulfilled. That information helps guarantee accurate skills are covered and the customized Learning Accelerator Plan is followed. If necessary, this provides a real-time opportunity to adjust either.

Summary

Digital transformation depends upon workforce transformation sooner rather than later if both are to be successful. The Learning Accelerator Program contributes value to your digital journey because:

• More digital transformation happens every day at increasing velocity
• Workforces require upskilling and reskilling to support the digital transformation
• Learning paths should be relevant to specific job roles, with attention to business goals and technological changes

Digital transformation is happening now and will continue. Now is the time to build a workforce transformation for your business to help it succeed. Here are quick ways to learn more about the Learning Accelerator Plan:

1. Visit Dell Technologies Education Services Learning Accelerator Program;
2. Fill in the Learning Accelerator Program Survey
3. View or download the Learning Accelerator Program flyer.