Over the last year and a half, the global coronavirus pandemic has not only enforced work from home but also accelerated the digitization of most businesses. The majority of the companies that we’re following a gradual easing into the digital mode of working till early 2020 have fast-forwarded into the top gear to complete the process for their employees to work from home or remote. While digitization is the need of the hour, also important at the same time is diversity, equity, and inclusion. So companies should address both responsibilities simultaneously. 

While the implementation of digital tech is crucial for growth, stability, and being future-ready, empowering employees to use emerging technology and prepare them for how their roles may evolve in the future is equally critical. Given that companies are investing huge amounts of money in the newest technology to quicken their business growth, they must also ensure that every one of their employees gets a chance to learn, upskill and succeed with those tools. Even as they do so, Human Resource professionals with such companies need to tread off the beaten path to scout for new talent and nurture them. At the same time, tapping in-house resources for unfilled opportunities even if they are outside the employees’ domain or expertise makes a linear organization multidimensional with continuous learning. Moreover, it’s important to help people upskill by knowing how they learn best. That will help faster learning for the employees and in turn, further, accelerate business and growth. 

Considering the pivotal role of HR, it’s strange that many don’t understand the strategic part these professionals play in the journey of business transformation and change/innovative initiatives while tackling the industry-specific challenges faced by them. This is also why HR professionals need to transform themselves too, by (i) becoming digital experts themselves, (ii) leveraging talent processes, and (iii) ensuring the teams contribute to and review digital strategies to align with needs and expectations of business and employees. 

While working towards digital transformation, it is also essential for companies to cultivate a digital culture, for the former can’t exist without the latter. Studies have proved that companies that facilitated digital culture were more likely to perform five times better than those that didn’t. 

Digital culture can be cultivated by focusing on three aspects — (i) Articulating the change that is required, (ii) Activating leadership characteristics and engaging employees, and (iii) Aligning the organization to the new embedded culture. 

Given their key role in the empowerment and upskilling of HR employees, it would be right to call them representatives for the digital transformation. They help propel the process forward by getting employees to not only participate but also successfully drive the digitization of the company to be future-ready, which at the end of the day, is beneficial to both the organization and the individuals.