Uncover strategies to help narrow your organisation’s digital skills gap with our detailed, comprehensive guide. Jayne Mather offers best practices for immediate impact
No matter what your industry is, your organisation needs to embrace digital transformation to modernise, sustain and advance your business. That means replacing your ageing legacy systems, utilising cloud-based solutions, embracing AI, automation and other cognitive computing advances, strengthening your cybersecurity measures, and making the most of your data.
Digital upskilling programmes are needed in conjunction with your talent acquisition strategy
But it’s not enough to be integrating these systems into your infrastructure; your L&D team need to be prioritising the digital skills of your people and enabling a culture that is ready to keep pace with innovation.
This article will provide best-practice recommendations to narrow the digital skills gap in your business and get the maximum return on investment for your technology and upskilling investments.
The business case for digital upskilling
The consequences of the digital skills gap are quantifiable and sobering. In the UK, inadequate digital skills among the workforce could lead to a potential loss of £145bn in cumulative GDP growth from 2018 to 2028, while individuals lacking essential digital skills miss out on approximately £5.69bn in wages annually.
A 2001 survey across all sectors published by British Computer Society found that only around one in eight IT projects (13%) were successful (i.e. delivered on time, to cost, and to specification).
Forbes, McKinsey, John Kotter and others have been quoted as saying that 70% of strategic change projects fail. That is because it doesn’t matter what technology your digital transformation project is implementing, it’s people that drive change and make things happen.
To make your software projects successful, people need to be upskilled in the required digital skills and have the will to adopt the technology; that means getting them engaged and invested in making the change a success.
The skills gap is then further exacerbated by the rapid evolution of technology as the half-life of skills is becoming increasingly shorter, particularly technical skills which now have a half-life of just 30 months.
Additionally, two-thirds of large UK businesses report difficulties in recruiting employees with the necessary digital skills which drives up recruitment costs and delays as you compete for those with the skills necessary to harness and progress your digital transformation efforts.
This skills crisis not only affects current workforce efficiency but also poses a significant barrier to filling employment gaps, to preventing job displacement, and enhancing overall economic growth. By understanding the imperative to narrow the digital skills gap, organisations can better prepare their upskilling initiatives to ensure their workforce is equipped with the necessary skills to thrive in the digital era.
Impact of the skills gap on organisations
The digital skills gap poses serious challenges to organisations across all sectors, leading to decreased productivity, higher costs and stifled innovation. When employees lack the necessary digital skills, tasks take longer to complete, errors are made, output can be substandard and you are unlikely to have the skills required to meet organisational goals.
When employees lack the right technology to do their jobs well, this can lead to employee frustration, inefficient processes, uncompetitive business models and underperforming systems that hinder growth and potential.
Innovation also suffers when there is a shortage of skilled professionals. Skilled individuals bring essential expertise and creative problem-solving capabilities needed to drive new ideas, technologies, and strategies. Without them, businesses struggle to develop and implement innovative solutions, fail to leverage new technologies, and cannot keep pace with technological advancements and market trends.
Recruiting for digital skills is highly recommended, but they are in demand by many organisations, and so digital upskilling programmes are needed in conjunction with your talent acquisition strategy.
This makes upskilling in-house a necessity to retain employees and ensure you have the talent required to future proof your business.
Providing technical training to your employees should not be a one-off course offering, but a cultural shift to continuous learning crucial for adapting to industry changes and maintaining a competitive edge in an increasingly digital world
Best practices for digital upskilling programmes
- Organisational change management
To effectively narrow the digital skills gap, organisational change management is crucial for securing employee buy-in. This involves clearly communicating the vision and strategy behind your digital upskilling programme. Transparency is essential; by openly discussing the reasons for the programme and the benefits it will bring, you can alleviate change anxiety and dispel fears of being displaced by technology. When employees understand the purpose and potential of digital upskilling, they are more likely to embrace the changes and engage with the process enthusiastically.
- Leadership involvement
Leadership plays a pivotal role in the success of a digital upskilling programme. Leaders must be visible champions of the initiative, demonstrating their commitment to digital transformation through utilising the technology themselves, demonstrating how their actions and decisions are being driven by data led insights, and articulating the benefits of a skilled workforce. By modelling the desired behaviours and continuously communicating the importance of digital skills, leaders can inspire and motivate employees to follow suit.
- Needs identification and goals alignment
An exercise is required to evaluate the current workforce’s capabilities against the technical and soft skills required to drive future growth and adapt to the new technologies on our roadmap. This involves a detailed analysis of existing skills and pinpointing areas where enhancements are necessary.
Once the skills gaps are identified we can determine the scale and content for our programme as well as which individuals need specific learning paths or who already has the skills required to mentor others. Organisations need to prioritise closing these gaps based on their impact on business goals and the urgency of needing these skills to maintain competitive advantage.
But it is not just technical skills, the analysis needs to examine factors such as leadership, culture, organisational design, and employee experience to identify gaps between current performance and desired outcomes. By taking a holistic approach to understanding organisational needs, L&D professionals can make a compelling case for the importance of digital skills and connect upskilling efforts to broader business performance.
- Learning design
Successful digital upskilling programmes require a structured approach. L&D should design customised learning paths that cater to individual aspirations, address the results of our skills gap analysis, and align to organisational needs. These paths should include a blend of online and classroom courses, mentoring, practical experience, software vendors own training offerings, and certifications.
Ensure learners are involved in their own development planning and have the autonomy to tailor their education to individual interests as well as role requirements. When we empower employees and engage them in the process, they are much more likely to be invested in seeing the successful outcomes of the programme.
- Innovation hubs
Establish an online innovation hub as a central focal point for digital upskilling to encourage creativity and technological advancement within the organisation.
- Provide a central repository for downloading approved apps, software, tools, and resources.
- Host competitions or ‘hackathons’ to invite solutions to problems, inefficient processes, causes of complaints, or even give them free rein to work on anything they feel will have a business benefit.
- Include online forums or discussion boards dedicated to technological solutions, ideation, and discussions.
- Allow people to upvote potential innovation ideas to crowdsource your digital transformation intelligence.
- Provide access to knowledge articles, courses, and learning opportunities for a range of digital skills. Don’t put barriers in the way of learning – if someone wants to learn how to code, for example, even though it’s not required for their role, give them access to the online resources.
- Utilise your experts as mentors to both coach specific individuals as well as create training or thought-leadership content.
- Detail policies, guidelines, ideas and examples for how generative AI or other tech can be utilised by the different business functions.
- Encourage employees to form groups to experiment with ideas, nurturing a grassroots approach to innovation.
- Establish citizen developer initiatives to empower employees to use no-code or low-code software to autonomously build simple websites, forms, dashboards, apps or automations to simplify their own work or tasks in their own department
- Offer awards, rewards and incentives for employees who can demonstrate how their digital upskilling has resulted in a tangible business benefit.
- Super user networks
Super users are invaluable to organisations undergoing digital upskilling. This network of identified talent can operate as change agents, tech experts, mentors and trainers, and project resource to champion the benefits of your chosen technology and influence best practice in all users. By involving super users early in the technology implementation process, organisations can ensure smoother transitions and higher engagement levels, leading to successful digital transformation.
Super user networks leverage principles from social learning theory about how people learn from one another through observation, imitation and modelling. This approach not only accelerates the learning process but also makes it more relatable and accessible, as employees trust the information from their peers and see their colleagues successfully utilising the new technologies.
Communities of practice theory also provides evidence for why super user networks work so well. This theory highlights the value of groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis.
Super user networks function as communities of practice, where members learn the technology together and continuously share insights, solve problems, and develop best practices. This collaborative approach not only improves individual competencies but also enhances the collective knowledge and capabilities of the organisation.
- Digital adoption platforms
DAPs are essential upskilling tools to facilitate the effective use of software applications through on-screen tutorials, wizards, and real-time at the point of use contextual guidance. DAPs reduce the learning curve associated with new software technologies resulting in enhanced user satisfaction and productivity, and accelerated time to value. These platforms play a pivotal role in digital transformation initiatives by ensuring employees are proficient with new technologies, which is crucial for organisational success.
- Evaluation and adaptation
To ensure the sustainability of digital upskilling initiatives, organisations must engage in continuous evaluation and adaptation. This involves regularly assessing the effectiveness of training, the impact on employee experience, and measuring the effectiveness at meeting strategic business goals. It’s also important to stay abreast of technological advancements to ensure your upskilling programmes evolve as the technology capability does.
Success stories
Several organisations have demonstrated significant success through their upskilling initiatives. For instance, financial services provider Capital One created a full-stack development academy to tackle skill shortages which sees over 200 people hired annually after graduating. They also have an internal ‘Tech College’ to give all employees the opportunity to develop their digital skills. It’s open to employees inside and outside of IT and gives access to thousands of free training and certification courses in subjects such as agile, cloud, cybersecurity, data, machine learning and AI, as well as mobile and software engineering.
It offers both live classes and pre-recorded courses, enabling the training to fit employees’ schedules and development needs. Through the Tech College, Capital One are developing the necessary skills in-house as well as giving employees the opportunity to grow and expand their careers and skillsets.
Equinix, a global provider in digital infrastructure, implemented intelligent automation software to streamline processes and free up their employees for more value-added activities, saving approximately 175,000 employee hours. But what is more impressive is what they did with those hours saved; demonstrating their commitment to employee empowerment and continuous learning, Equinix established a digital accelerator community for employees to dedicate those hours to improving their skill sets and discovering new ways to contribute to the business.
Henkel, a global leader in adhesive technologies, recognised the need to stay competitive in an evolving market by enhancing the digital skills of its 52,000 employees. Partnering with Accenture, Henkel launched a comprehensive digital upskilling initiative that began with a digital capabilities assessment to identify strengths and gaps among employees. Tailored learning programmes were developed, blending best practices with Henkel-specific use cases and in just 18 weeks employees completed 215,000 eLearning courses and 272,000 training registrations. Henkel’s vision for continual upskilling, supported by AI-based skill management tools, ensures its workforce remains inclusive, innovative, and equipped to meet future challenges.
Looking to the future
By investing in your people to narrow the digital skills gap, companies can drive a culture of continuous learning and development that is not just a strategic priority but a vital investment in your future. By following these best practices and remaining adaptable to change, your organisation can harness the results as an opportunity for innovation and growth and navigate the evolving technological landscape with success.
Jayne Mather is a specialist in software implementation projects and author of ‘Super User Networks for Software Projects: Best Practices in Training and Change Management‘ and has a second book out in December 2024: ‘Redesigning the Organisation Using AI’
