Help digital talent shine
Workplace strategies need more than a tweak or two or digital natives will turn their back and go elsewhere
Workplace strategies need more than a tweak or two |
Digitalisation offers almost endless possibilities to communicate faster, work more efficiently, and be more creative — all in real-time. But groundbreaking digital business models need pioneers — creators, forward-looking thinkers and inventors who don’t hesitate to leave the beaten path, embody ownership, and who understand how to translate customers’ wishes into superb new products, services and solutions that evolve with speed.
Getting the right talent on board can decisively accelerate a company’s digital transformation. At the same time, if your daily corporate practice doesn’t fulfil their expectations regarding a vibrant and flexible working culture and a social media-minded environment, digital natives will simply turn their back on you and go elsewhere.
Recruiting and selection in the digital age therefore needs to be tackled in a more strategic way than in the past. So how do you position your company as an attractive employer for digital talent?
Prepare the organisation for a new beginning
One way is to eliminate rigid structures, previously the enemy to digital thinking. Digitalisation involves, among others, suddenly converging areas that used to be siloed. Take industrial companies. In the past, their sales departments defined specifications according to the customer’s wishes, which were then transferred step by step into the manufacturing process. These days, it’s expected that everything should happen almost simultaneously.
Previously, the top priorities for IT departments were equipping data centres with hardware, purchasing software, and further developing proprietary software. Today, companies take their server capacity and software from the cloud. These changes have to be taken into account when scanning the market for talent.
Allow freedom to create
Another way to make your company attractive for digital talent is to give them as much creative freedom as possible. Today, more and more organisations have started to empower employees who are close to their customers by creating small and agile crossfunctional teams with profit and loss responsibility for their market segments. This helps to eliminate dependencies among business units, ease communication process and facilitate creative workspaces in the organisation.
Showcase your best talent — and give them what they need
It’s important to encourage the employees you already have, provide them with resources and let them decide things themselves. They should be able to follow their ideas and feel accountable for them.
Offering regular development opportunities can also help you make the most of your talent. In most cases, you won’t select a learning offer from a general training catalogue — as in the pre-digital era. Development will have to be customised for each individual. That might be a course, the opportunity to lead a project, or gaining new insights by working in another part of the company.
Wanted: Employees with a mixed skill set
Another way to attract the best digital talent is to keep an eye out for applicants who bring a diverse mix of skills. Two things are crucial here. First, you need talented individuals who want to be customer-centric and who are able to cross the traditional (internal) customer and IT organisational boundaries in order to truly feel what customers want. In some cases, it could be helpful to even “embed” your employees at the customer for a period of time.
Secondly, it’s clear, that digital business models require experts who view data as an essential element of future value creation — regardless of the specific expertise they bring to the company.
Create room for adventure
Finally, be aware of the impact of your culture. Today’s digital talent seeks adventure and a job that gives them meaning.
The more comfortable they feel in the workplace, the more willing they will be to work harder for your company’s success. And they want to be surrounded by similarly minded colleagues.
Companies must ensure their culture can meet these expectations. A company can differentiate itself on culture also by taking a strong stand on issues that are of concern to their employees, and by having leadership principles that are not just on paper, but reflected within the employees every day.
Digitalisation is happening fast. That shouldn’t be an excuse for taking shortcuts in recruiting. Jeff Bezos once said: “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
In the end, only a carefully planned and executed HR strategy will allow a company to achieve the digital transformation and develop it in such a way that it fulfils the company’s long-term goals.