6 Factors That Make or Break Your HR Digital Transformation

WalkMe Team
By WalkMe Team
Updated November 9, 2021
Digital transformation has gone from ambitious to mandatory in a short period of time. Now companies must focus on adopting new technologies before the competition. To thrive in a rapidly evolving digital era, you need to be agile. With a high level of flexibility, you can easily adapt to any forces and trends that can impact the success of your digital transformation. One department that experiences the impact of digitalization is HR, where staff need to be reactive and responsive to survive.

Make digital transformation smooth and easy for the whole company today.

HR demands a higher investment in HR technology. The department is responsible for important core workforce initiatives, such as recruitment, retention, performance, skills development, and culture. Each of these is critical to maintaining the company as a well-oiled machine that can produce a successful digital transformation.

What role does HR play in digital transformation?

HR doesn’t just play a passing role in digitizing the workplace. In this tech renaissance, organizations need HR leaders to successfully lead the jump to digital HR. A strong HR team today drives digital transformation forward in a business. This role involves so much more than automating processes. Through innovative thinking and digital, data-driven strategies, HR must empower its workforce to be able to adapt to any new changes that arise. HR digital transformation leverages technology disruptions to boost performance and productivity. Tackling that all-consuming fear and employee resistance to change starts first with skilled HR.

How to activate your digital transformation

Implementing change in your enterprise is only daunting without a roadmap to get the ball rolling. Let’s take a closer look at the 6 digital transformation tips your company needs to zoom past the competition.

1. Get your team on board

Adopting new changes will fail without first inspiring your team to embrace digital initiatives. Before anything else, headquarters must sponsor the digital transformation journey. There’s a difference between acknowledging change and celebrating that this change is critical to your long-term success. If your team doesn’t support the change, how can your business take advantage of these new tech tools and processes? Building sponsorship starts with high-ranking staff. When employees observe leaders endorsing the new business strategy, they’ll be more likely to follow suit. Not only this, but HR should actively engage employees throughout the digital transformation process. Their input should be considered, and employees should clearly understand company goals. All stakeholders should be involved, especially considering HR professionals guide the entire organization through a smooth digital transformation. With sponsorship gained organization-wide, you’ll have the support you need to successfully evolve in the digital revolution.

2. Transparency is key: Establish clear team-centric goals

Before embarking on a transformative HR journey, take time to think about what you’re trying to achieve. This makes sense from a business perspective, where new initiatives should address commonly experienced problems. When your end goal in using digital transformation tips is to make your staff’s lives easier, productivity will naturally increase. You want to incentivize your team to meet key milestones, which in turn will foster growth. When transforming HR, focus on employees. Always let them test new processes out before you go full-steam ahead with your digital strategy. That way you can gain valuable feedback to set and improve your company’s strategic objectives.

3. Spark innovative ideas and set them in motion

Brainstorming is a great way to initiate the ‘change’ conversation with your team. Empower your employees with the opportunity to discuss the flaws of the current system. Talk about how pursuing digital transformation tips can resolve these shortcomings and frustrations. Prioritize these conversations and use the discussion to fuel your company’s approach to transformation. After all, every idea has the potential to push your digital efforts and successes forward. However, putting ideas into action can require significant resources, a consideration that needs to be evaluated early on before executing any digital strategy. You can start with high impact, low effort ideas because these will gather momentum on route to transforming HR operations.

4. Don’t overcomplicate when digital road mapping

There’s nothing wrong with keeping things simple. Though the tech processes themselves might require advanced training to unlock their true capacity, your approach to using digital transformation tips doesn’t have to match this complexity. Start small and simple and build from there. Look at areas in need of a makeover, discussing initiatives with staff to unlock critical improvement. Problem areas could include recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, and more. By proactively involving everyone, you’ll gain a better understanding of what to prioritize for your transformation process.

5. Cultural change is the ultimate catalyst

Digital transformation can bring about change, but it’s the mindset of employees that will drive powerful change forward for your business. This means addressing change on a behavioral level. Promote the benefits of HR digital transformation in your workplace throughout strategy implementation. Highlight the advantages of using a digital mindset to embrace new technologies in a constantly changing digital world. These are the elements that pave the way for a successful transformation.

6. Evaluate your journey and monitor progress

Once you’ve implemented new measures and digital tools, it’s crucial you measure their success. Otherwise, what’s the point of introducing something new to your company if you don’t understand its true impact? You can use different metrics to measure the success of your HR digital transformation, to critically assess what’s working well and what isn’t. Don’t be afraid to cut processes holding your company back from survival— especially not when your competitors are already building onto their digital vision. Expose the gaps between where your system is now and the direction where you want to push it. Tweak your digital roadmap where it makes sense— and only pursue the tech tools improving your internal and external business operations. To put it bluntly, your company won’t win in the digital revolution without the right HR digital transformation. HR is the only way your company can set and implement changes that resolve operational problems. Digital transformation isn’t an addition— it’s essential to the fate of your enterprise. Evaluating new technology is a crucial sixth step to your digital journey. Building a high-growth team with a strategy to outpace your rivals begins and ends with your HR leaders.
WalkMe Team
By WalkMe Team
WalkMe pioneered the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for organizations to utilize the full potential of their digital assets. Using artificial intelligence, machine learning and contextual guidance, WalkMe adds a dynamic user interface layer to raise the digital literacy of all users.