What COVI9-19 has taught us about our talent strategy

Accelerating Your Digital Transformation in 2020

While the COVID-19 crisis is far from over, businesses are slowly beginning to shift gears from crisis mode to what comes next. And what’s next will likely be an adjustment for many. Lessons learned during the pandemic will be critical to informing how we adjust on the other side.

One of those lessons: tech-, talent-, and remote-enabled businesses who had begun to embrace digital transformation early experienced less chaos and far fewer setbacks. 

So, what can we learn from COVID and the digitally mature who survived it? As we compress our efforts to become digitally mature against a deadline, what investments will prove most effective?

If digital transformation wasn’t a priority before, it certainly is now.

Companies who hadn’t prioritized transformation were more vulnerable, and they were in the majority: 84% of businesses said they knew a transformation strategy was critical, but only 3% felt they were doing “enough” about it. 

The pandemic closed that knowing-doing gap and has made a future initiative a right now initiative.

The name “digital transformation” may be inherently to blame for why efforts have moved slowly until now. To succeed, it requires actual transformation, not just the addition of new tools. In The Technology Fallacy, the authors note that “companies are simply trying to balance too many competing priorities. It’s difficult to keep the current business running while also preparing it for a digital future.” 

COVID-19 showed us there won’t always be a future for businesses if it isn’t a digital one. The pandemic distilled all those competing priorities into one: continuity. 

It’s not your typical change effort. It’s cultural, organizational, and operational.

By 2018, only 16% of companies had reported success with transformation, and a mere 7% said those gains were sustainable. The consensus? That digital success with transformation was elusive. 

But the pandemic showed us that successful transformations weren’t just about those initial touted benefits—they had the power to prevent devastating disruption. Doing it right requires change that’s fundamental and not always comfortable—like using distributed models with remote talent, finding ways to work more cross-functionally, and taking the task of talent acquisition off of HR’s plate alone.

Which means it needs to be top-down, but also grassroots. Transformation strategies that involve key players and formulate a clear “change story” are 3.1x more likely to succeed. 

Touch base with each team. Learn their blockers, bottlenecks, and opportunities. Determine how tech and talent can support their transformations. 

Post-COVID, remote work will be here to stay—and remote talent will be the way.

In the thick of the crisis—with call centers shutting down, offsite workflows stuttering, service disruptions, and remote work challenges—continuity came easier to the digitally mature. It’s telling that those with well-established remote work policies carried on. 

And the new landscape should be even more remote-friendly. For those who previously bumped up against “red-tape, stringent labor regulations, and limiting mindsets that might have held back these types of bold initiatives under more normal circumstances,” now is the time.

Digital transformation isn’t just about tech, it’s about talent. Be ready for it.

Digitally mature companies have one thing in common: they’ve innovated with remote talent. Pre-COVID, 94% of hiring managers reported that their organizations use remote workers. During COVID-19, many saved the day for businesses struggling to survive. And post-COVID, real transformation will hinge on closing the digital skills gap with flexible talent.

“Effective delegation (to on-demand talent) requires knowing how to source critical skills, how to assemble teams and get them up and running quickly, and how to use decision support tools effectively to meet those goals. These skills can provide organizational agility and the collaborative environment that characterizes digitally maturing companies.” The Technology Fallacy

Ultimately, your success in implementing new tech, scaling it up, and seeing real gains will depend on technical skills like machine learning, app development, AI, and data science, which evolve every few years. They’re not easy to come by, either—90% of North American companies report they struggle to acquire the skills they need, 

In virtualizing your value chain, start with your talent strategy.

Investing in the latest software isn’t all there is to it. In fact, it has the lowest ROI compared with investments in talent. 

The solution? Independent talent, who are nearly twice as likely to have reskilled themselves in the latest tech. 64% of professionals at the top of their field are increasingly choosing to work independently. It also virtualizes hiring, recruitment, screening and compliance.

We haven’t seen the end of the crisis yet, but now is not the time to dial back—especially when it comes to transforming talent strategies. The leaders who prepare their companies by addressing gaps today will be the ones giving their companies the best shot at a bright future.