Digital Transformation (DX) as a strategy to retain topnotch talents

From the invention of telegraph in 19th century to the widespread use of emails and social media platforms in 21st century, the world has come a long way to become a global village finally. Nearly half of the world’s population is constituted of digital natives and digital immigrants, thanks to the increasing affordability and accessibility of new-age technologies. Doing business in this new global village is easy when it comes to establishment of the enterprise, but extremely onerous if getting an edge over the competitors is the chief objective.

The instantaneous communication with customers, putting teams together with a shared vision and mission, and retaining employees as well as customers for continual business growth and expansion are some of the top challenges faced by almost every business type. Well, there is absolutely no challenge that happy employees cannot solve, but there are a lot of problems that dissatisfied employees can create.

According to a survey, around 54% of Indian workers consider leaving their jobs once in a while; especially those falling in the age slab of 20-24 years. A trend spotted recently, enterprises, small or big, are seen actively incorporating technologies to automate and reform varied business operation after realising the impact of digital transformation on client servicing, revenue generation and turnover. And now, they got one more reason to adopt digital transformation strategy—to engage and delight employees.

Digital Transformation & Employee Retention

The latest technologies such as Big Data Analytics, Robotics, Predictive Modelling, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, and Blockchain are a proven boon to the businesses that make sluggish growth by sticking to outdated techniques and practices. According to Gartner, adopting digital initiatives topped the priority list of CIOs in 2019. The essential focus would be on double-digit growth, organisational agility, and high employee retention rate.

Unlike before, a majority of the Indian workforce is formed by the youth and millennials for whom a secure job and well-paid salary is not sufficed to stay in a company for long. They are more into learning new things time and again in the company and contributing significantly to the organisation with their work and skills. The newly joined employees are too fast in making decisions as they tend to decide within the first six months whether they would stay or leave. This further makes employee retention a huge challenge for the HRs and CROs.

Digital transformation (DX) eases this task of HRs to a great extent. To successfully transform into digital, the enterprises need to develop digital competencies in the staff and upgrade resources. By providing them with new-age tools and software that are the levers of digital transformation, the companies give them freedom to experiment with new ways of working.

The digital transformation does not only mean the automation and digitalisation of 60-70% of the organisation’s practices and operations. It is aimed at supporting and reforming every important or non-important part of the company. More than using digital technologies to serve customers better, it stands for being what a company offers to both its employers and clients— best-in-class experience.

A company’s transition from traditional to digital sphere involves the adoption of DevOps, Agile and related technologies, allocation of resources, and employee training directed towards the enhanced employees’ skills and productivity. What’s more is that this transition can be used as a strategy to reduce employee retention rate as they can engage employees, deliver them seamless and personalised working experience, what young workers are always on the hunt for.

DX empowering employees

A decade ago, an employee’s professional strength used to be determined by his skills and efficiency in performing mechanical work. This is the same today as well, only the context has been changed. The companies harnessing the power of digital transformation have already started building a hybrid workforce where humans work cohesively with machines and robots. In this human-to-hybrid workforce, where a professional is provided with real-time data to decipher and decide by the AI-powered tools, the professional program the applications to complete a particular task.

All in all, human work in a digitised environment with robots and technological advancements which removes may bottleneck for the teams. For example, the sales and marketing teams are supposed to be working in tandem but many conflicts arise within them due to lack of information and data on where their ads should be targeted and where the customers should be pitched. With Big Data and Analytics, both teams can settle down on one goal if they know from where they can get new customers and accordingly plan their campaigns, pitches, and of course, budgets.

But for these, the employees are to be trained and up-skilled to make the most out of technologies and accelerate digital transformation. Such upskilling programs laced right in the heart of digital transformation can significantly help in resolving employee retention issues as the employees are willing to work with the organisations that like to invest in them.

Helping them realise their worth

The hardest part of anyone’s job is being unnecessarily burdened with the tasks that are menial, repetitive, and totally uninspiring. Feeding tonnes of data into the system or sorting stacks of files and documents are the real pain for any professional. The companies utilising digital platforms can eliminate this boredom from the employees’ life and encourage them to spend their invaluable time performing tasks that require his cognition and intelligence. Digital transformation begins from automating the menial jobs like data entry and ends with streamlining important tasks for employees that help in boosting their morale and make them feel like their work is worthy.

Many IT and software companies are shedding the load from the shoulders of employees by removing as many menial and repetitive tasks as possible. Moreover, sticking to the work station for eight to nine hours also creates health and mental issues for the employees. Using tech such as cloud computing that enables one to work remotely can help cut
another reason from employees’ “Why to quit job?” list.

Also, digital transformation does push employees to get confident about their capabilities by enabling them to complete their duties successfully and with perfection. It provides them with all required knowledge, software, and tools that increase their efficiency to execute their job function without much hassle.

Indeed, happy employees are the ones that make successful businesses and digital transformation is the key to employees’ happiness.

By Abhishek Agarwal, Senior VP, Global Delievery , Judge Group