5 Tips on Bringing Digital Transformation to Life for Employees

No matter what industry we’re in, digital innovation has the potential to transform the way we work. Today “digital” has evolved to mean more than just “information technology”. Digital now means several things, including taking advantage of innovations from artificial intelligence (AI) to the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide industry-leading customer service. One of the biggest hurdles to digital transformation is culture, according to more than half (55%) of UK companies surveyed. For digital transformation to take root, we need to help our employees change how they think about their work, and not just change the way they work. To do this, we need to create employee experiences that bring digital transformation to life. Win hearts and minds with a Digital & Innovation Week To grab the attention of our 12,000-strong workforce, we organised Vodafone UK’s first ever Digital & Innovation Week, a series of events and live demonstrations at our headquarters in Newbury and eight other sites across the UK. Each day featured a new theme, from Digital Customer Experience to Digital Employee Experience. Our employees loved it – I’ll share some of their feedback below, along with 5 tips on creating a successful Digital & Innovation Week of your own. Consider a live Q&A with your CEO to kick off the Week When launching a new initiative like Digital & Innovation Week, it’s essential to open up a dialogue with staff. That’s why our CEO, Nick Jeffery, was on hand to not only explain what the Week was about, and why it mattered, but also to listen to questions and concerns from employees. One staff member said afterwards that she thought the session highlighted how approachable the leadership team is, while another told us it gave him valuable insight into the business. Inspire employees with “wow”-factor technologiesDigital & Innovation Week is an ideal time to show off technologies that have the potential to transform your industry. At our Newbury HQ we wowed a crowd of several hundred with a variety of demonstrations, including one featuring connected drones, a technology our field service teams are using for tasks such as surveying our Network sites. Provide interactive demos to showcase key technologies Technologies like AI and IoT are the future of just about every industry. To make these technologies tangible to employees, provide interactive demos. Our employees told us they especially enjoyed interacting with technologies such as TOBi, our AI chatbot, and “V-Pet by Vodafone”, an IoT device that’s a location and activity tracker for dogs and cats. To demonstrate how “V-Pet by Vodafone” works, we had some friendly canine guests model the device, which might explain its popularity with the crowd!Hold themed competitions to boost employee engagementDuring Digital & Innovation Week we hosted a number of competitions, each one designed to highlight the theme of the day, from “Win a Drone” to “Win a Robot”. Each competition attracted hundreds of entries, and helped us to significantly increase engagement. Make digital education part of the employee experience A good time to promote your company’s digital education initiatives is the end of the week, once employees have experienced the benefits of digital innovation for themselves. On the day we devoted to Digital Employee Experience, we set up booths where our staff could try out Vodafone University, a platform that delivers all our training in one place. Several hundred employees took part in the Day, and since then we’ve seen increasing use of our e-learning platform. Helping employees to embrace digital change is an ongoing process, of course. And there’s so much we can learn from each other. How are you engaging your employees in digital transformation? Share your thoughts below! From Oliver Cox, Head of Strategic Planning & UK Internal Comms