In the new world of work, where everyone is connected and change is happening faster than ever, organisations must move away from ‘digital transformation’ and towards ‘digital evolution’.

By digital transformation, I mean a disruptive shift achieved through the digitisation of non-digital products. By digital evolution, I mean the continual incremental adoption and refinement of new/emerging technologies.

There are numerous benefits to adopting a digital evolution mindset – principally, it’s more cost-effective and people-centric. That’s because it’s more gradual – a regular, sustainable long-term investment that allows people to iterate and improve the familiar before moving to the next phase of innovation.

As such, here are a few things HR Directors should know about digital evolution and why it is important in any organisation.

Why is digital evolution important?
Harvard Business Review reported that, of the annual $1.3 trillion spent on digital transformation pre-pandemic, an estimated $900 billion was wasted. That’s because many of the companies behind these figures failed to adopt robust, long-term strategies to support their tech development.

Had they considered combining analytics and customer insights, they could have been more structured, nuanced – and personal. The result would likely have been increased revenue, improved margins, and delivered an optimised back end of the website – freeing up time for further innovation.

With the current rate of change – where new technologies and services are developed and released at lighting speed, providing better information, increasing automation, and pushing boundaries further – I would argue that if you’re not  continuously evolving, you’re risking business success.

What could be preventing digital evolution in your organisation?
While there are many reasons that people fail to embrace digital evolution, one key reason is that they are apprehensive about tech development and lacking in knowledge. There could also be ‘change fatigue’ – there’s already been tremendous change over the past few years and now employees are being asked to contend with another platform/tool/project/process.

At Vidatec, we believe that there is an opportunity for more awareness, education, and training to overcome these barriers and help people embrace the new digital evolution reality. Of course, more in-depth continuous development is essential in tech teams, but it’s also incredibly useful to broaden perspectives and develop the digital skillsets of everyone in your organisation, including in areas such as GDPR, data protection and cybersecurity risks. Also understanding of analytics – how to use customer engagement and user traffic information to ‘design by data’ when creating digital products/services.

As HR professionals, you can help by supporting knowledge sharing, enabling upskilling opportunities, and taking the fear factor out of digital. This more inclusive, people-centred approach also means sharing responsibility for tech across an organisation, with the added benefit that it leads to increased resilience, greater innovation, and creativity.

How can you ignite the evolutionary journey in your organisation?
For digital evolution to be successful, you must have the right people, engaged in the right way at the right time. That’s because people are your primary resource and a key enabler of success. So, begin by mapping your stakeholders, then ensure you establish effective communication channels so that there is a constant flow of information in both directions.

Of course, some of these stakeholders are more obvious: Product Managers, Data and Analytics Analysts, DevOps, Data Scientists, UI/UX and Service Design and your Data Privacy Officer/CIO. However, the entire company – not just your tech department – must be engaged and invested in digital evolution. Every employee has the potential to be a brand ambassador for your product or service. They might also know some of the primary pain points and have ideals for how to solve them!

Customers are another key group. They choose to use your product or service and can provide brilliant insights about what they love (and don’t love) about your digital offerings, and how they currently use them versus what they wish they could use them for. Elsewhere, partners, external consultants and industry experts could have different – and very revealing – perspectives that could revolutionise the way you think about your digital offerings.

Other opportunities to support digital evolution
The single best way to practice digital evolution – and maximise your investment – is to ensure full business alignment. So, bring your team together early on to collaborate on an agreed, long-range digital roadmap. This upfront investment of time will ensure alignment and clarity about current/future state, how to get there, and how to how you can measure success along the way.

This sort of holistic approach also ensures you breakdown any siloes and move to a more connected, collaborative way of working that will inevitably help your organisation move from digital transformation to digital evolution.

To help your people be part of the solution, ‘hackathon’ days can be particularly effective. This brings people from all different departments, including senior leaders, together into teams, usually with a developer in each team, to pick a problem and work out how to solve it with technology. Properly supported with the right tools, this leads to some creative thinking, with the best ideas often being implemented.

With digital evolution comes a new long-term way of thinking – very different to the ‘go big or go home’ digital transformation mindset. So, to ensure the evolution journey is successful in your organisation, champion these approaches and – as HR professionals – support your colleagues to make the necessary shifts.

As I’ve already said, your people can, and should, be an enabler of digital evolution. With increased awareness, skills development and training, your people can overcome any blockers, embracing and enabling a new digital evolution reality.