Digital dexterity refers to the practice of adapting to emerging technologies and new digital solutions. It helps organizations improve their business strategy, meet their growing customer demands, and boost workforce productivity.
Naturally, it’s fundamental to the process of continued success, helping organizations survive and thrive in an ever-changing technological landscape.
In this article, we’ll discuss what digital dexterity is and the top 5 benefits of digital dexterity for your organization. Additionally, we’ll elaborate on 6 surefire ways to achieve digital dexterity at your workplace.
This article contains:
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- What is Digital Dexterity?
- Top 5 Benefits of Digital Dexterity
- 6 Surefire Ways to Achieve Digital Dexterity
Let’s get going.
What is digital dexterity?
Digital dexterity is the ability to improve work efficiency and business processes with trending and cutting-edge technologies.
It helps create a tech-friendly, modern workforce that can bring about a successful digital transformation in organizations.
For instance, digitally dexterous organizations use digital analytics software to gain accurate and in-depth business insights. This, in turn, can help them assess their sales, growth rate, customer behavior, and even how effective their current strategy is.
According to Craig Roth, Vice President of Gartner Research, digital dexterity is about the methods as well as the mindset. Apart from learning about new technologies, it’s determined by the employee’s willingness to put in that extra effort for better business outcomes.
A. Why does your organization need digital dexterity?
To stay ahead in the fast-paced business world, you must make digital literacy a priority in your organization.
In fact, according to McKinsey, digital dexterity is a key factor influencing an organization’s profits and revenue growth.
And by possessing digital dexterity skills, your employees can make the most of every emerging technology.
Here are four important reasons why your organization needs digital dexterity.
1. Brings more value to customers
Various digital platforms help customers make informed decisions regarding any product or service and create a positive customer experience. Technological innovation like artificial intelligence can give customers a personalized experience and help you optimize chatbots for customer service betterment.
2. Promotes technological adaptability
Digital dexterity gives your employees the confidence to learn, experiment, and adapt to new technologies for better results. This is beneficial for both the employee’s growth as well as the organization’s development.
3. Keeps you ahead of competitors
In today’s digital age, stakeholders and end-users are constantly looking for solutions that are smart, effective, and agile.
Digital dexterity lets you reach out to your end-users via various automation processes like push notifications, email blasts, etc. It gives you the much-needed headstart to outperform your competitors.
4. Helps you track business growth and KPIs
Want to know what your sales were last month? Or maybe how many customers you acquired?
Plenty of SaaS (Software as a Service) applications and digital tools can help you track the most meaningful productivity KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and provide helpful business insights. This, in turn, keeps your organization on the path of continuous improvement.
B. Who should initiate digital dexterity?
Digital dexterity is a team responsibility.
Every department should conduct research on digital initiatives and new skills that can help them grow as a business. Based on their area of work and expertise, employees should look out for trending digital tools that can help them bring better results.
All business units should come together with their own ideas to implement this organization-wide transformation.
In other words, bringing about digital dexterity can’t be the sole responsibility of a Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Here’s how different departments within your organization can help in promoting digital dexterity.
1. IT professionals
The IT team can support employees with their technical queries. They can suggest useful tools and support articles to eliminate any roadblocks. They can find ways and work on adopting any new technology to meet the organization’s demands.
2. HR
They can organize induction training alongside introducing new digital policies and employee incentives under the digital dexterity program. The head of Human Resources (HR) can set the tone for digital transformation, which is then eventually picked up by other departments.
3. Marketers
The social media marketing team can find better ways to engage with their target audience and improve key metrics like reach, impressions, etc.
With tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Audience Insights, they can understand more about customer behavior and cater to their needs more effectively.
4. Customer service staff
Even the customer support team can pitch in their ideas and improve service workflows with customer service training software.
For instance, machine learning can help them analyze customer data and provide more valuable services. With digital features such as real-time chat support, an easy ticketing system, and pre-built response templates, they can improve customer relationships in the long run.
Top 5 benefits of digital dexterity
Here are the top five benefits of promoting digital dexterity within your workforce.
1. Better productivity
Digital tools can immensely improve your productivity by giving you better results in less time.
As employees get acquainted with a particular digital skill, they learn to implement it in ways that are beneficial for themselves as well as the company.
For instance, digitally dexterous employees can increase their efficiency and agility by using an advanced productivity management tool like Time Doctor.
What’s Time Doctor?
Time Doctor is a powerful time tracking and performance management tool used by major companies as well as by small businesses to boost business efficiency.
It gives you insightful reports about your performance and helps you manage the time spent on every task in a better way.
Here are some of its robust features:
- Time tracking: Track employee work hours and understand the rate of progress in every task.
- Projects and tasks: Helps you understand which tasks need more focus and how long it takes for you to complete a project.
- Detailed reports: Analyze employee performance with detailed productivity reports.
- Work schedule: Create shifts and schedules for all employees.
2. Complete business agility
Business agility refers to the process of continuous improvement to beat the competition.
Various digital initiatives can help companies work faster and implement a better business strategy.
For instance, cost-effective technologies like payroll management software can benefit the HR department. It streamlines the payment process and even automates repetitive tasks. This way, it helps you reduce the headcount in that department.
In other words, you get better results by investing less — increasing your profit margin and strengthening your position in the market.
3. Greater flexibility
Digital adoption allows employees to experiment with new roles and responsibilities, which are often beyond their scope.
With DIY (Do It Yourself) tools and online self-help portals, employees can engage in continuous learning. For instance, WordPress has helped millions of people create their own blogging websites without any coding.
Flexibility also gives employees more control over the work methodology. Some degree of autonomy can also help you avoid any employee resistance to the cultural change brought about by digital transformation.
Such a flexible approach can also drive greater employee engagement and your organization can reap the benefits of a digitally dexterous workforce.
4. Ability to work remotely
Organizations worldwide have discovered the benefits of remote work during the pandemic.
Some of these benefits include:
- Cost savings.
- Access to a greater talent pool.
- Flexibility of schedule.
- Higher employee attendance.
Employees with a high digital dexterity level can work smoothly from anywhere as long as companies assist them with a robust remote training program.
Organizations can continue onboarding and managing employees using digital solutions for task management, hiring processes, etc., while working remotely.
5. Improved collaboration
Digital dexterity lets employees connect and complete every task satisfactorily by brainstorming on team calls or collectively editing docs in real-time.
It makes knowledge sharing simple, improves the project workflow, and offers a centralized platform for accessing files.
In fact, digital tools for team collaboration are essential for both remote and in-office teams. It helps in the even distribution of workload and acts as a single source for all work-related information.
6 surefire ways to achieve digital dexterity
Organizations can unlock the full potential of their employees by boosting their technological capabilities. These digitally dexterous employees can, in turn, experiment with innovative solutions to become lifelong learners and successful innovators.
Here are some ways that’ll help you implement digital dexterity at your workplace.
1. Align your digital strategy with overall goals
You must define your business goals and objectives. Then, you need to identify the digital technology that can help you scale your operations and achieve those goals.
For instance, an e-commerce company can benefit from voice search functionality. On the other hand, a sales company can boost their profits with AR/VR technology that shows how a product can make the customer’s life easier.
2. Start small and grow gradually
Don’t introduce digital change on a scale right away.
Your employees must be ready to embrace new technologies and they should be allowed to do so at their own pace. Otherwise, it may lead to friction.
Organizations must assess various factors beforehand, like:
- Team strength.
- Current level of digital dexterity.
- Expected level of digital dexterity.
- Technological resources/support needed.
You should initially aim to maintain steady progress rather than setting high expectations from day one.
3. Address employee concerns
Naturally, every team member will be at different levels of digital dexterity at the very beginning. You can organize group discussions where individuals can share their ideas and raise doubts openly.
Fostering this kind of openness within your workforce will ensure that no one feels insecure or insufficient but feel empowered to get their doubts clarified.
4. Conduct regular training sessions
You need to integrate digital dexterity into your company culture.
Introduce incentives and policies that encourage your employees to take the required steps towards digital transformation.
Teach them digital skills that have an immediate positive impact on their work. This way, your employees can achieve a high level of digital competency while learning on the job.
The management can organize a digital workplace program in the form of LMS (Learning Management System) courses, PPTs (PowerPoint Presentations), or pre-recorded sessions.
Employees can also use a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) to cope with the digital transformation. These platforms help individuals learn any software by simplifying the user experience and improving their knowledge about that digital platform, website, or app.
5. Promote essential soft skills
The digital change can be much smoother once they understand the importance of mastering soft skills like communication, teamwork, and time management.
Employees who are keen on improving teamwork and overcoming communication challenges will readily embrace unique, fresh ideas in the form of digital initiatives.
So combining an employee’s aptitude with the right attitude can help you successfully implement digital dexterity.
6. Keep higher management in loop
Since senior leaders and executives are the ultimate decision-makers, they need to be aware of technological advancements more than anybody else.
They should determine which digital tools can enhance their business outcomes, give them an edge over their competitors, and help them meet the benchmark for success. A thorough understanding of the emerging trend will help them frame an appropriate digital strategy.
Moreover, employees are more likely to welcome digital advances on an individual level when they see business leaders advocate for them.
Final thoughts
Digital dexterity ensures a higher success rate for your company by keeping your employees on the path of continuous learning and improvement.
Additionally, it empowers your workforce with the most advanced digital capabilities. This, in turn, can help them improve existing structures and daily operations for higher efficiency.
Use the tips and tools we covered above to understand how digital dexterity impacts your organization and how to implement it with ease.
Andy is a technology & marketing leader who has delivered award-winning and world-first experiences.