Digital Transformation: What is it? How are routines changing?

Digital transformation concerns not only the means of communication and sociability, but work routines. Compliance is at the heart of the work of Human Resources professionals and their obligations in this area are increasingly important.

In a globalized and constantly evolving world, the challenge of the company's technological transformation becomes more essential than ever, and even vital.

This change involves adapting the employees' workspace, which is not without consequences for the way they work, but also for the needs that arise in terms of training and cybersecurity.

What is the impact of implementing digital transformation on the quality of life at work?

Digital transformation is often presented as providing opportunities in terms of flexibility and cooperation. By “abolishing” distances or facilitating the move from one world to another (between companies, between departments, teams, between employees and their homes), it is possible to consider more flexible organizational methods:

better data sharing,
better access and circulation of information, networks,
better deadlines, etc.

The automation of certain tasks with little or painful added value, the development of robots can be conducive to a better quality of work life for employees, under certain implementation conditions.

The development of digital technology can give employees the ability to develop their autonomy in the workplace: allowing them to develop know-how or expand their possibilities for action, for example.

But the constraints caused by the development of digital work are numerous. This development can be a source of work intensification and densification, of information overload, of strengthening the control of activities with a feeling of loss of autonomy.

More broadly, the development of digital technology points to issues of individualization and disintegration of work groups, excessive restrictions on reactivity, diminishing boundaries between private and professional life. Automation can be seen as overdeveloped.

Important questions to ask

It is above all the usefulness and purposes of projects and technologies that must be questioned: in what way are they useful and to whom are they useful? In a balanced way? Homogeneous? Uneven?

How are these projects and technologies accessible? There is limited shared, common or restricted access, etc. for this or that type of employee, role and according to what criteria?

It is the usability of technologies that should be concerned and question their ergonomic aspects from the point of view of practicality, fluidity of the relationship, etc. As smart and artificial as digital technologies are, they need to interact with and deal with other forms of intelligence in work organizations.

It is about questioning the questionability of projects and technologies. When, how and with whom are they questioned? According to which modalities, given the asymmetries of position between the interested parties?

These elements are more important, as they condition the intelligibility of projects, technologies and uses. Because it is from dialogue that meaning proceeds, through the collective construction of linguistic conventions that allow individuals and collectives to discuss and agree on the order of things and build meaning in work and works.

Finally, it is the modifiable or adaptable nature of the project and the technologies that it is necessary to be able to question in order to better organize and translate the dimensions of the problems that arise in practice into the reality of work.

Scan the desktop

The success of a digital transformation depends on the ability of managers to change the way they work within their company. Getting started by adapting the workspace to your needs is the starting point.

To do this, more and more business leaders rely on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) technologies that centralize all the operational processes of a company, integrating all its functions, what concerns accounting and financial management, sales, distribution or even shopping.

ERPs were usually hosted on internal computer servers in companies, but the trend today is for outsourcing to public or private cloud, which induces more flexibility and security.

Benefits

The advantage of implementing cloud solutions is that it allows workstations to be virtualized on a large scale in order to make them accessible from any device, be it a tablet, desktop PC or laptop or even a smartphone.

All this through a Wi-Fi connection, for example. According to specialists, “the great challenge for managers is to guarantee that flexibility and mobility become a reality in the company”.

Whether at an appointment, on a business trip or at home, the employee can immediately find his entire universe of applications, with the corollary of an increasingly blurred professional private boundary.

A gear in wellness at work

It must be said that the quality of the work environment, through digital transformation, is an essential element in the motivation of this hyper-connected young generation, very concerned with well-being at work.

Suddenly, to attract the millennial generation, companies do not hesitate to rethink their workplaces, but, above all, to accelerate their technological transformation.

In fact, according to the forecasts of the North American institute Brookings Institution, the millennial generation, called generation Y, will represent 75% of the active population in the world in a few years.

Born after the Internet, this new generation of employees has acquired an intuitive command of the web and new technologies, which affects not only their behavior, but the way they work.

Companies that do not prepare for this new professional scenario will find it difficult to attract and retain them, with all the consequences that this implies in the development of their activities.

cyber security

Of course, this new digital workspace must offer permanent but secure access to applications and information. Indeed, at a time when cyber-attacks have become commonplace, it is essential to implement an effective cybersecurity strategy because, mechanically, digital transformation increases the surface of these attacks.

According to experts, more than half of entrepreneurs believe that this transformation does not involve risks. But, to support the company in this process, it may be relevant to obtain support, especially if digital maturity proves to be insufficient.

It is at this price that it will be possible for companies to adapt to disruptive changes, using digital skills to create new cost-effective models, products and services.