How digitalization is making us more human?

Digitalization is often stereotyped to people surrounded by screens and paying every little attention to their surroundings. People often use digitization and digitalization interchangeably, but they both have different meanings. As explained by J. Scott Brennen, Doctoral Candidate in Communication, and Daniel Kreiss, Associate Professor, "We refer to digitalization as the way in which many domains of social life are restructured around digital communication and media infrastructures."

In spite of digital taking over every aspect of our lives, the World Economic Forum (WEF) states complicated problem solving, analytical thinking, and creativity as the three most crucial things in today's time. If you notice, none of this is digital oriented but human-centric because the most humanitarian you will ever need to be is in a digital world. 

What does this mean for organizations that are driving such huge forces of employees? While organizations are looking at the digitizing process, they also need to focus on humanizing workspaces for happy and productive environments. 

Here are some factors that are making us more human in the face of digital takeovers: 

Building a sense of empathy 

In a world where everything is constantly changing, you cannot rely on traditional methods and patterns. Digitalization requires us to make our learning processes continuous and more ingrained in reality. This enables questions regarding what your consumers think along with what and how your employees think. It, therefore, drives questions like  Why is building a good corporate culture so crucial for a company to succeed? Do the current frameworks deem fit for future use while also helping existing methods of thinking, processes, and systems? All these questions force you into putting yourself in the other person's shoes and realizing what is best for the greater good. As Meryl Streep says, "The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy." 

Demands thinking, not root learning 

Are digital mediums evolving to fir human needs or are humans evolving to fit digital in their lives? Or is it both? In the case of humans and digital evolving simultaneously, workspaces need to evolve as well. Plenty of information brings with it the problem of retention. Rote learning will be extinct in the future, and more emphasis will be laid on the skill of using the human brain rightly. In such situations, organizations need to build a workforce that can have skills that blend multiple subject expertise to generate valuable insights and solve layered market obstacles. The demand for people who can blurt out facts has completely evaporated. Digitization demands hard-thinking as compared to previous models of blurting facts and making graphs. 

Required collaboration and participation 

As pointed out above, in an ever-changing world, there are no right answers served on a platter. Moreover, you definitely cannot find the correct answers without building a culture of transparency and collaboration. It is the need of the hour to work together and discover solutions collectively through the method of co-creation. Mistakes are a prominent aspect of this process, but the crucial thing is continuous dialogue and tremendous effort by all irrespective of ranks and positions.  

Helps to focus on core competencies as humans instead of routine tasks 

As per reports, 45 percent of existing functions could be automated using existing exhibited technology. This means that the focus is not on how well you can feed data in an excel sheet, but if a person is competent enough to make sense from the data provided. The potential that automation holds after being accompanied by AI, machine learning, etc. are challenging our current business model. As of today, a candidate is required to have tactical knowledge and skills that can translate difficult tasks into terms that are immune to automation.

Digitalization as said by Rosa Riera, VP, Employer branding, Siemens, "In the digital age, it's therefore not primarily a question of technology, rather of how we want to shape a digital world for ourselves." While building a digital workspace, you need to adopt the new business form that blurs the digital and physical world to make humans more human and fit in the digital world.