If you consider digital transformation as a matter of new technologies, you don’t have a clear picture of digital transformation. Who deals with new technologies implemented in your organisation? Who does marketing in your organisation? Who calls and deals with clients? Who solves the queries of customers? It’s the employees in your organisation and the digital transformation starts with these people.
Ziglar quoted about the deep relation between business and people where he said It’s impossible to build a business alone. Instead, we should build people first and these people build the business. To run a business and drive digital transformation, technology is a crucial element. So technology plays an important role in any organisation and digital technology does replace people efforts in many ways. But it’s not everything about technology. There is an important factor which holds everything together, whose brains work behind these technologies, who are capable enough to work in any environment and capable enough to communicate with the customers. These are the employees of the organisation who drive the digital transformation in an efficient manner. Though we have many factors which affect the digital transformation and every factor plays an important role in the digital transformation process, the people factor is a special case where on advancing the people factor it, in turn, advances the other factors.
Does digital technology replace people?
We have seen many new developing technologies like cloud, apps, automation, artificial intelligence which are built to reduce human effort and to digitally transform the organisation. These technologies reduce the hectic tasks but every technology needs human intervention. Technologies can never replace people. What they rather do is augmenting the capabilities of people. So in order to achieve success in the long term, we should maintain a balance between technology and people so that they work together and the collaborative intelligence helps in achieving greater goals for the organisation. What if an organisation replaces people with technology? Will there be more profit? It’s an absolute no because in the short term it may or could improve the benefits of the organisation but when we consider long term there won’t be any future for this organisation.
Artificial Intelligence and people
Artificial intelligence is also dependent on people as it boosts the strength of people’s capabilities. In Artificial Intelligence, people should play some crucial roles that include training, illustration and preservation. You must have heard about training where training involves teaching machines how to perform the tasks they were assigned to do. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa are some of the valuable donations in the field of artificial intelligence and these required human trainers to bring human touch and spirit in these devices and it was indeed a great achievement in this era. Illustration involves explaining the use and behaviour of these machines to the users. Lastly, we have assistance which involves sustaining Artificial Intelligence. It ensures that AI is working properly and also ensures the safety of the people. It makes sure that AI does not harm humans in any way. Organisations could earn benefits from this collaboration and must understand how machines and humans can augment the strengths of each other.
An organisation should invest more on people
Humans can connect with humans better than any machines. They understand emotions, feelings and have the ability to think and thus could understand the queries of customers and could interact with clients in an efficient manner. Moreover, people possess different talents which could be an asset and provide a lively feeling for the organisation. People have emotions and thus their commitment towards the company creates loyal employees. Most of the organisations require skills and smart working strategies which most of the technologies do not possess. These scenarios force the organisation to invest more in human capital. Organisations should mould the capabilities of the people so that they could fit in with the needs of the organisation.
Moreover, digital transformation involves continuous changes and humans should be able to adapt to these changes. So the organisation should ensure that people are given enough time and knowledge so that they can cope up with the changes.
Do you value your employees?
Employees should be given enough freedom to introduce new ideas, strategies, technology to your organisation so that they feel being a part of the organisation and thus can keenly work on every aspect. Once they take starting their own decisions they feel more responsible towards the organisation and thus could be more productive. Organisations should put their trust in the employees and should make them feel they are an important part of this organisation.
Answer their queries. Let them make decisions. Listen to their perspectives. They need their hard work to be recognised and feel that they have brought success to the company. Explain the project and the goals that need to be fulfilled and make them a part of this mission and make them understand what role they play in this. People consider these things more than money.
So people are an important and inevitable part of any organisation. Even if technology reaches the extreme heights where there are millions of robots, you can’t ever replace the human spirit and their intelligence. It’s always the most necessary or unavoidable part of the organisation. By giving them a voice in your organisation, moulding their capabilities in the right manner and enhancing more communication with them can lead the company to greater heights.
