Covid-19 has been many things, but the digital transformation it has encouraged has been significant, whether due to the newly remote workforces, the urgent need for online sales channels, or the need for cloud-based technologies to maintain business operations. It’s fair to say, therefore, that digital competency is a key requirement at both an individual and organizational level in the coming years.

New research from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work explores the role digital has played in giving forerunners supremacy before exploring how things might unfold in the coming years.

Digital change

The report reveals that digital is having a profound impact across the economy, but despite the indelible signals, there are still those who believe, or hope, that it will all blow over and they can carry on with business as usual.

Much of the digital transformation that we’ve seen in recent years has been driven by AI and big data. While there has unquestionably been a degree of hype surrounding both, the report suggests we are increasingly seeing value come through and begin to match the lofty expectations. This requires a high degree of digital competency within organizations to allow them to capitalize on the possibilities presented by these technologies.

“By 2023, organizations that have acquired deep skills and expertise in deploying AI into mission-critical business processes will be well-positioned to outperform, while those that are still struggling to make meaningful progress will be also-rans,” the authors warn.

Redesigning the business

As Michael Hammer famously warned back in 1990, it’s no use applying new technologies to old processes, so in order to get the most out of AI and automation, jobs are having to be redesigned so that man and machine can work well together. It’s a process of human augmentation rather than substitution, and the authors argue that by making technology a partner in work, organizations can reshape how they operate.

This also underpins a shift away from using employees as simplistic labor resources and towards a richer and more nuanced perspective on our workforce. This is supported by a transition towards stakeholder capitalism that seeks to use purpose and culture to secure true inclusion in the workplace.

This is part of a more sophisticated understanding of just what technology can, and cannot do. The report suggests that we’ve moved away from viewing technology as either killer, job-snatching robots at one end, or a digital silver bullet that will automatically tackle all of our woes.

“Rather, respondents more fully understand not only the power of the tools in their hands but also the hard work ahead for those hands,” the authors explain. “People are very much in the loop.”

Key findings

The report’s key findings include:

• The pandemic is skewing employer/employee relationships: Business leaders cited employee safety (59%) and worker recognition (58%) as the top areas of focus. Looking to the long term, more than half of business leaders (52%) indicated that digital working practices and organisational agility (50%) will increase, as a result of experts working across functional and departmental boundaries. Other changes on the horizon include 43% of respondents expecting to see a drop in pay for highly paid executives and 41% expecting to adjust their HR policies to accommodate flexible approaches to remote working.
• The skills touted as most important for advancing careers are changing: 40% of business leaders chose innovation skills as most important for succeeding at work today, behind decision-making skills (39%) and leadership skills (35%). When compared to 2016 results, global operating skills have fallen the furthest (voted the second most important skill by executives in 2016 but not even making the Top 10 in 2020). Due to the COVID-19 crisis and supply chain concerns, many executives were forced to bring supply chains back into the business’s country of domicile.
• The impact of digital technologies on jobs accelerates: Business leaders today say they are less concerned that new machines will take over their jobs than they were in 2016. Today, 44% agree that digital technologies will protect them from being replaced by robots and AI (compared to 34% in 2016), and 46% say they believe these technologies will help them stay employed (compared to 37% in 2016). However, the belief that business leaders have in the power of digital technologies to improve efficiency is dwindling. Only 46% agree that it improves their productivity (87% in 2016) and only 44% state that it helps them collaborate with others more effectively (69% in 2016).
• IoT is the tech du jour to augment and improve business processes: Although more than 70% of business leaders have implemented data analytics or AI as pilots or full projects, the Internet of Things (IoT) is seeing the highest implementation of full deployments (16%). Over two-thirds (67%) are at some stage of implementation. Despite widespread endorsement of the value of 5G for businesses, the report found that only 9% of respondents have a 5G pilot underway.
• There are no technological silver bullets to guarantee results: When rating the impact of technology on the business by 2023, business leaders identified AI as having the greatest potential influence (43%), second only to hyper-connectivity (47%). However, when comparing results to 2016, business leaders’ expectations of most technologies, including business analytics, AI, and cloud services, dropped. Today, only 34% cite cloud as a force shaping the future of work compared to 52% in 2016, telling us that cloud is a table stakes strategy, rather than the force multiplier it once was on the future of work.