Digital transformation is about talent, not technology

As authors Becky Frankiewicz and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic point out, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, “we should never waste a good crisis.” With the immediate digital transformation of the workplace a sudden necessity, the two authors note that now is the time “to focus on reskilling and upskilling people so that they are better equipped to adjust to change.” Here are their four core themes to ensure you are developing your workforce for the challenges that lie ahead:

1. Put people first
2. Focus on soft skills
3. Drive change from the top 
4. Make sure you’re acting on data insights

Throughout each of these themes, the authors emphasize how your hiring process and talent retention strategy should focus on fostering a culture that discovers and builds up employees with a wealth of soft skills. Moreover, by using the data insights from new technologies, like AI recruitment tools for candidate sourcing, talent leaders can open their talent pools to internal candidates that might not always check the box on hard skills, but have the intellectual curiosity and learnability to be redeployed and retrained to fill needed roles during a hiring freeze.

To quote Frankiewicz & Chamorro-Premuzic, “the distinguishing feature in the war for talent is always leadership: in-demand skills such as software engineering are what we talk about, yet the key is to find the people who can manage the software engineers and get them to work as a team to outperform other software engineers.”

In summation, they are telling talent acquisition teams that by hiring leaders that use technology to simultaneously digitally transform workflows and advance the skills of their workforce, your company will be better positioned for both the duration of downturns and the potential of upturns.