The upskilling of employees’ digital skills was previously not considered a priority and had little effect on an organisation, however, it has become a crucial part of an organisation's business strategy not only to ensure the future sustainability of an organisation but also to keep competitive within their respective industries.
Organisations therefore cannot afford to ignore the changing digital world around them and must start understanding what Digital Upskilling is, why it is important and how best to implement it.
What is Digital Upskilling?
Many people misperceive the meaning of digital upskilling thinking it involves complicated coding and software programmes and therefore not relevant to them. However, it is relevant to everyone, it is the continuous process of training employees to use existing and emerging technologies, to adapt to an ever-changing digital world, and to increase awareness of new technologies and how best to implement them within the organisation.
Why is it important?
Digital Skills are core abilities expected from all employees working within any modern organisation, however, there is a large gap in digital skills developing within all industries resulting in a reduced number of skilled workers available. If an organisation allows this disparity in digital skillsets to grow larger it may find itself falling behind in its Digital Transformation program resulting in a loss of competitive advantage over its rivals.
Providing opportunities to employees not only forms part of an employee’s overall development within an organisation, which is crucial to developing and moulding the employee for the future needs of the organisation but also it motivates employees to work more efficiently therefore leading to what hopefully will be a higher rate of productivity. If an organisation improves the overall digital skillset of its employees, it can also plan for future work which may not have been possible beforehand therefore providing a more stable future.
How to implement it?
An organisation must be careful in the implementation of digital upskilling and should have an upskilling strategy in place suited to the organisation ensuring the relevant skills are being targeted.
Digital upskilling can be implemented through a variety of channels:
Employees lead their own development by choosing the development path they want to pursue by choosing to undertake training courses and resources provided to them by the organisation. Employees can also suggest other training if they believe it will benefit their role within the organisation.
Fixed learning paths are created and tailored by the organisation, comprising of training courses targeted at specific skill sets for employees in specific roles. This ensures employees are being trained to the needs of the organisation.
Organisations can create internal forums, breakout sessions and networking events to encourage the sharing of digital knowledge internally.
Like PwC, an organisation can embark on a digital acceleration program aimed at accelerating the upskilling of selected employees thereby enabling them to help the organisation adapt to and adopt new technologies, spread out knowledge across the organisation quicker, drive new ways of working and ultimately speed up the overall Digital Transformation journey. The PwC Digital Accelerator Program has helped the firm to embrace emerging technologies, to drive the adoption of new ways of working across the network and to become more flexible and serviceable to its clients.
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