Plan, prep and strategize: How to build on digital gains to drive business transformation

Digital transformation is a term that can often be wielded in the wrong way. Oftentimes it is used to mean digital adoption but getting past simply choosing the right technology and implementing it, whilst this is crucial, can be the key to making any transformation efforts a success.

To understand more about how to ensure digital transformation drives business transformation and makes organizations more flexible, agile, and insight-driven, Kate Graham, Head of Content Labs and Insights at UNLEASH is joined by Helen Armstrong, CEO & Founder of SilverCloud HR, and Jessica Fuhl, Director of Content Marketing at Sage to shine more an of light on how digital transformation, done properly, links to better analytics and people success.

“It’s about streamlining work — and helping not hindering.”
– Jessica Fuhl, Director of Content Marketing at Sage

Watch on-demand to:

• Understand how transformation helps underpin efforts to attract, retain and successfully compete for top talent.
• Get more informed about how to get past digital implementation and towards digital people’s success.
• Learn more about how to make digital work for you and the C-suite via the delivery of insights and analytics.

Building on digital gains to drive business transformation

Over the last two years, most organizations have gone through digital transformations, pivoting their operations and people structures. Yet, that process should be ongoing and businesses are now having to come to terms with this. As such, with change a constant and digital progression now continual, many businesses are now looking to ensure that all of this change works to make their workplace more adaptable, flexible, and resilient, rather than it working against them. In other words, making sure digital gains drive business transformation.

Fuhl, therefore, kicked off the webinar by going through recent Sage research on the topic. Firstly, there’s the sense that all of this change has made working in HR, well, hard. In fact, a Sage survey of HR practitioners found that 95% find that working in HR is too much work with many feeling burnt out and considering leaving. Many also feel there is too much process and administration.

But this argues Fuhl, is where digital transformation can come in: by implementing the right technology the function can automate time-consuming tasks and free up time for practitioners to become more strategic in a truly business beneficial manner. In this way, Fuhl argued, a digitally transformed HR function can deliver more agile ways of working so teams are more equipped to deal with change. This, she explained, is key because increasingly there is no luxury of time and it is difficult to plan ahead. However, there is a problem: HR technology adoption rates are as high as many want to expect for all this talk of digital meaning the function isn’t yet unlocking the benefits.

So, how can HR get better at digital adoption?

Fuhl sympathized with HR, understanding that the function can often be running around so much fighting fires it has little time to take stock and look at digitization, although it might be aware this could solve some of the efficiency and time-constraint problems that affect it. As such, Fuhl shared some tips the function can use to improve digital adoption. Knowing where your function is regards digital maturity, organizational structures, and the digital skills you have is important in order to understand how to get there. Linked to this, is understanding where you want to go.

Measuring where you are and using metrics is also key, Fuhl added. Understanding how digital transformation is doing (or not doing) regarding employee hours saved, error reduction rate, elimination of low-value tasks, and return on investment can be key to managing its success. It can also help HR make the case to the business, as it links digital transformation strategies to business outcomes, in order to get further investment to keep digital transformation moving forward.

Yet, HR can’t forget some of the basics, either. It must be clear, with itself too, about the budget, time, and resource constraints around digital transformation. This needn’t be an inhibiting task but can distill where the most effective investment might be and help make the all-important first steps or investments and ensure realism guides any forward movement. It can also help HR, rather than IT, take the lead — which is crucial in ensuring that any project leads to people and organizational benefits.

Additionally, Fuhl added that HR needs to assess its own skills in order to ensure digital transformation is a success. It might want to create a core digital transformation team within itself, clarify roles and hire non-traditional HR profiles as well as speaking to tech vendors and analysts. It might also want to assess its own agility capability and how to ensure other responsibilities don’t get dropped. And, crucially, it will need to understand that true transformation has no real endpoint: HR must keep iterating as it goes and checking in regularly to build towards continual success.

Progression with no endpoint

If there is an endpoint of course it means HR has to create a sense of what success looks like. This can be difficult says Armstrong, as it is really only since the pandemic that HR has become truly digital — and the function has a lot on its plate already. Here, Armstrong reiterated Fuhl’s points about knowing what you want to get out of transformation and ensuring it aligns with the business strategy as key ways to measure success.

Understanding the importance of these processes says Graham, is also important, and prioritizing them alongside the day job — even if that can be difficult — is also key. And, Armstrong said, being confident in the process can also be important as this can HR better own the transformation processes it is driving. Additionally, Armstrong said reviewing new systems and processes it is putting in place as part of digital transformation can also be important, ensuring that users understand the reason and the mechanisms of what has changed.

Getting the workforce bought in is also another way to check success — and can underpin future success too by crowdsourcing ideas. Yet this kind of culture has to be led by the leadership, Armstrong added, who must act as stewards of a culture whereby everyone is critically engaged with process asking if they’re efficient, productive, or digital enough.

Yet, with HR doing so much, Fuhl added towards the end of the webinar, the function can also help itself keep driving forward and measuring future success by also looking back: understanding that is it a function that has already come so far and delivered previous successes integral to the business. “There’s a lot that HR leaders and teams should [already] be proud of,” she concluded, intimating it is this confidence that will be crucial to charting the unknown digital landscapes of the future.