from The Wall Street Journal

By: Stephen Redwood and Mark Holmstrom, principals, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Zach Vetter, managing director, Deloitte LLP
May 10, 2017

 

CIOs can take a proactive approach to preparing the workforce for the tremendous technology-enabled changes required to compete in the years ahead.

Digital technology is having a profound effect on the human side of the enterprise, affecting where, when, and how employees get work done. The results of Deloitte’s recent Future of Work survey confirm that C-level executives view the ways in which new technologies will shape their organizations and their own roles as a topic of critical importance. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of those surveyed say it is a strategic objective to transform their organization’s culture with a focus on increasing connectivity, communication, and collaboration.

Even as more business functions are augmented by new technology capabilities, people remain the most critical asset of an organization. Going forward, those people will be working in a more networked, distributed, mobile, collaborative, and real-time fluid manner. Such significant shifts will demand not only increased adaptability on the part of employees, but deliberate forethought from CIOs and other executives introducing new systems and processes to make sure the transition goes smoothly. Forward-thinking CIOs will ensure that work, increasingly done by human and machine in concert, is coordinated to create maximum value for the company and its employees.

 

When approached with consideration to the impact on work and workers, digital technologies offer the opportunity to create a more engaging environment for employees and a more adaptive organization for the future. The survey offers a glimpse of what executives expect this future to look like as well as six lessons for CIOs who will usher in the technologies to enable new ways of working and also manage the changes within their own talent organizations.

 

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