As concerns regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological advancements that are changing the work landscape have been dominating discourse in the business world, HR professionals are tasked with ensuring they and their organizations are not left behind. In response to HR’s need for support and guidance in navigating ongoing rapid digital transformation, global research and advisory firm McLean & Company has published HR’s Role in Driving Meaningful Digital Transformation. The firm’s new thought leadership research provides insights into the roles and responsibilities HR must perform and considerations it must address on the path to enabling meaningful digital transformation for their organizations, emphasizing that HR plays a crucial role in transformational success.
In the resource, McLean & Company explains how digital transformation signifies a large-scale technological shift that opens fresh possibilities for an organization’s business model. HR brings the critical lens of people management to digital transformation, including considerations around culture, workload, employee engagement, inclusion, and equity, which are just a few key areas in which HR’s expertise is needed for successful transformation.
“Technology either disrupts or disrupts and transforms organizations,” says Lisa Highfield, principal director of HR Technology and AI at McLean & Company. “An expanded understanding of what success means for digital transformation uncovers the potential of HR’s pivotal contributions, leveraging its expertise in managing the people side of the organization. Regardless of which additional areas are used to define transformation success, how effectively people, processes, and technology are working together to build thriving operations will ultimately dictate organizational health and, therefore, success.”
McLean & Company covers the following four key areas of implementing digital transformation in the new industry resource to assist HR leaders in understanding and navigating rapid technological advancements for positive, long-term organizational impact:
- What is digital transformation? In the first section of the resource, McLean & Company outlines the definition and evolution of digital transformation, what a successful transformation entails, as well as the significant risks associated with misplaced efforts or refusal to adapt. The firm highlights that digital transformation is evolving, with successful transformation having a broad reach, including overall organizational and operational health. Other measures of success include competitive advantage, return on investment, velocity of implementation, and employee experience. Failure to adapt to digital transformation poses risks to these critical elements of success.
- The urgency and necessity for HR’s involvement. The second segment of the resource presents why the partnership between IT and HR is vital for digital transformation. Although digital transformation efforts typically fall under IT’s jurisdiction rather than HR’s, the scope and impacts of digital transformation necessitate HR’s involvement to bring the critical people perspective to the forefront. For example, when HR is a strategic partner, organizations are 2.7 times more likely to be highly effective at generating and implementing new ideas and 1.8 times more likely to be highly effective at changing quickly at scale to capitalize on new opportunities. Without HR’s strategic contribution to digital transformation, decisions will be made that lack insights into people priorities, such as balancing workloads, promoting engagement drivers, and implementing change management initiatives, which risks overexerting, overwhelming, and disengaging employees.
- Critical success factors for digital transformation. The third section of the research provides an overview of the four main critical success factors and how HR can own and activate them to support the organization’s transformation efforts. These tactical factors for digital transformation that fall under HR’s purview are:
i. Culture
ii. People and relationships
iii. Skilled and empowered employees
iv. Change management
HR has a special connection to and responsibility for organizational culture, with shaping and maintaining organizational culture anticipated to be HR’s top-rated value-add activity in 2030. By ensuring that the people programs across the organization effectively reinforce, recognize, and celebrate the behaviors needed for the organization’s digital transformation and support digital transformation, HR can define the desired behaviors and identify how they are being reinforced or inhibited within the organization. - The path forward. This portion of the firm’s research is intended to help HR assess its organization’s current state of the tactical critical success factors, and it provides guidance on how to focus HR’s resources strategically. With limited capacity and resources, it is impossible for HR to effectively cover all critical success factors simultaneously. McLean & Company explains that HR can avoid analysis paralysis by understanding the current state of factors in the organization and intentionally directing efforts where they will have the biggest impact, noting that strategic HR organizations can leverage positive downstream impacts of transformation to reinforce the strategic partnership role HR has established and contribute to the overall success of organizational objectives.
“Technological changes are process changes, which are ultimately people changes,” explains Highfield. “HR’s value as a culture steward cannot be overstated. It will be HR that identifies which elements of the current culture will best serve the organization through digital transformation, and which elements are getting in the way of desired outcomes. As people experts, HR plays the primary role in activating the critical success factors and amplifying the necessary behaviors to support success.”
McLean & Company advises that exponential advancements in technology and the ever-evolving global business landscape cause a continuous state of change. Even the most well-established action plan can become irrelevant if iteration and review is not built in, so the firm recommends that HR teams remain anticipatory to support the organization in staying competitive and innovative in the future of work.
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