People are at the centre of all digitisation-related processes and it is the HR and talent acquisition specialists who drive the digitalisation goal
While businesses find it fanciful to talk about digitalisation, they falter when it comes to talent. According to a Gartner study, 30 per cent of tech positions will remain vacant owing to shortfall of digital talent.
Companies need to understand who these potential employees are, where they can be found, and how they can be attracted and retained. At the same time, they need to identify the new digital job profiles and the number of digital employees required in the near future.
Here are the key profiles required for digital transformation of companies:
• Digital venture strategists – These people provide leadership across any stage of digital business model, whether they are sitting in a digital spinoff, digital department, strategic function, or elsewhere. They need to be visionaries and help people to shift from fear to opportunity.
• User interface (UI) and user experience designers (UE / UX/UED/UXD/XD) —UED design has become vital to the success of digital transition projects and so have the UI and UE designers. They are part of the digital development impact area, and focus on interfaces and experiences for users of software applications. Integrating UX into a digital transformation project requires starting with an accurate analysis of users’ needs: through surveys and workshops and by observing the environment.
• Data scientists —These people, who are part of the advanced analytics team, analyse and interpret data and can find hidden connections or interesting patterns in data. They are big data wranglers capable of cleaning and organising big volumes of messy data points (unstructured and structured) using their skills in math, statistics and programming. They apply all their analytical powers—industry knowledge, contextual understanding, skepticism of existing assumptions—to uncover hidden solutions to business challenges. Ability to visualise and communicate data is an important skillset that data scientists possess.
• Robotics and automation engineers —They build, configure and test robots, primarily for manufacturing purposes. They help to make jobs safer, easier, and more efficient, particularly in the manufacturing industry. The profile also includes perception engineers, robotics software engineers, test and automation controls engineers, and human-robot interaction architects.
• Scrum masters — They are proficient with the latest ways of managing development projects and facilitating agile ways of working. They facilitate an agile development team. In other words, they are the servant-leaders for the team. Scrum is a methodology that allows a team to self-organise and make changes quickly, in accordance with agile principles. The scrum masters manage the process of information exchange.
• Marketing automation specialists — They support digital marketing using artificial-intelligence bots to interact with customers online.
Digital enablement is a long journey, which can typically take years, depending on the starting point, the size of the business, and the resources applied. Yet, the effort pays off from the very beginning, as employees across functions can use their new skills, even in the initial levels, immediately.