Welcome to our fifth and final post on taking a People-First Approach to drive your digital transformation. As discussed throughout this series, digital transformation is really workplace transformation.
For shipbuilding, workplace transformation about encouraging collaboration and teamwork. It means bringing your people together to make data-driven decisions, streamline processes, and increase collaboration so you can build better ships, faster.
Technology enables workplace transformation. Here are a few ideas on how to effectively integrate new technologies into your long-term vision so people feel like they’re becoming more productive and efficient as a whole:
- Don’t Rely Too Heavily on Digital Communications
- Avoid Technology Notification Overload
- Extract More Value From Your Digital Tools
- Start by making Incremental Changes
1. Don’t Rely Too Heavily on Digital Communications
While new digital tools promise to facilitate communications, managers shouldn’t rely too heavily on technology. Digital communication gadgets can negatively affect the manager-employee connection because they make employees feel talked ‘to’ but not engaged ‘with’. Face-to-face conversations are essential for any organization’s success, especially for establishing a people-centric work culture.
2. Avoid Technology Notification Overload
The benefit of adding technology is that it can save you money. Technologies that make it easier to track what materials you need and how much to order helps reduce material waste. Technology also allows job sites to be more interconnected than ever before.
While you might think that adding more technology is always better, there’s such a thing as technology notification overload. Having multiple applications pages open on the desktop, emails flowing in every hour, and constant messages from internal chat apps, may cause employees to drown in notifications.
To compensate for the increase in interruptions, employees are working faster which leads to stress, frustration, and pressure. So be mindful of technology notification overload as it may lead to poor productivity.
3. Extract More Value From Your Digital Tools
But before investing in new enterprise software, managers should consult their IT departments on how upgrades in certain areas will integrate with current systems. It’s not always necessary to invest in entirely new software for digital workplace transformation.
For example, some departments may already be using apps and programs that help them be more efficient. This should be seen as an opportunity to make existing digital tools work together better. If you’re not sure how to do this or where to start, consider bringing in an outside expert. They can give you perspective on where you’re at versus where you could be.
4. Start By Making Incremental Changes
Little changes done well overtime compound into big change. As you continue on your digital transformation journey, we encourage you to start small. Remember that change doesn’t happen overnight. Start by updating one process at a time, so employees have time to get used to new ways of working. You can then tweak or expand these elements to determine what works best for a people-first company culture.
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