Happy Nice Mall

People can be your biggest catalyst or biggest obstacle to digital transformation. When challenges arise with people moving forward with transformation, problems are often very easy to identify but much more difficult to solve.

The difficulty is not awareness. Organizations realize that cloud transformations are difficult and they need highly skilled, motivated staff to run projects. However, they still find it difficult to establish the processes for building these staffs and as a result they achieve other project-oriented goals.

“By frequently celebrating achievements and innovation, you reinforce role model behavior and gain grassroots momentum for change initiatives.”

where things stop

Based on our relationships with customers, we evaluated corporate progress in terms of capabilities in eight areas that comprise: HPE Edge to Cloud Adoption Framework.

The People area is where organizations struggle the most to make progress, with an average maturity of 1.7 on a scale of 1 to 5, with a score of 3 indicating a cloud-ready organization (see Figure 1).

This does not mean that they are bad employers. They may value the employees themselves and aim to raise their overall skill level, but still fall short in the overall presentation of talent-related initiatives. They can create talent development plans but cannot align them with cloud-focused initiatives. And they may commit to doing a better job building a talent base, but fail to use their organizational muscles to make that happen.

The struggles cloud-focused organizations face on the human side can be traced to four of these factors (see Figure 2):

• Attracting and retaining talent
• Ability activation
• Communication
• Strategy and planning

While most organizations attempt to at least address each of these factors, many do not have the deliberate plans needed to drive their complex cloud transformation.

A methodical approach to identifying well-defined initiatives that can be implemented in measurable increments can go a long way in addressing the people-related barriers to transformation progress.

Attract and retain: Competing for special skills

Start by attracting and retaining talent. In today’s competitive IT environments, it is critical that organizations attract the specific skills they need. Every company competes for the same hybrid, public cloud, and edge capability. But organizations are struggling with traditional recruiting techniques. Job searches and executive searches often don’t reach people with the right skills. Compensation packages are getting expensive. Geographical requirements are often very strict.

Across the organizations we work with, those lagging behind in cloud maturity are not effective at acquiring the talent needed to do the job and are not expanding their on-premises plans to retain the talent they have.

In turn, leaders on the public front are developing systems to find and maintain this talent. They already have a solid foundation for performance and talent management and are adapting it to meet the needs of new domains such as hybrid cloud security, hybrid networking and IoT. Culture, salary competition and non-monetary incentives all play a role in how effective an organization is in talent identification and recruitment success.

Leading organizations are identifying new business functions and new application areas where exciting growth opportunities can be used to compete for interest. They attract talent outside of traditional full-time equivalent roles by developing strategic relationships for contractors, partners and other non-FTE employees.

An insurer we work with has set up a program to build on skills and competencies that allow it to develop an enterprise-wide risk and succession plan and target selective areas where it can outsource public cloud skills.

Talent activation: Streamline training to accelerate skill development

Once the workforce is ready, organizations need to put plans in place to sharpen skills in key areas of IT across everything from security to infrastructure to application development. Legacy stores often rely on passive learning techniques such as courses, webinars, and pre-recorded tutorials. However, they often have incomplete course catalogs as hybrid cloud and edge skills evolve rapidly. This means that they do not have current offers to train people.

Leading organizations in our client population generate better outcomes by creating learning journeys that focus on more measurable, active learning measures. Coaching and mentoring is a longstanding practice that builds trust in organizations, bringing new roles, platforms and responsibilities. They establish job rotations within roles and contexts.

They also apply techniques in so-called two boxes, where experts are brought in from an outside partner to work with staff. While these extra hands provide services, they also train employees to perform tasks associated with a new cloud venture – essentially catching fish, while also helping employees learn to catch their own fish. The top five US banks we’ve worked with have used this approach, emphasizing active learning techniques and modern student experiences.

Communication: Leading and communicating through change

We find significant differences in communication ability across our customer population that impact conversion effectiveness.

Transformations affect employees in different ways. Organizations mature in this capability are using new platforms, performing new business, working on new programs, and often reporting within newly structured team structures.

Where we see problems with communication, organizations often fall short in explaining the new environment and helping employees adapt to new expectations. Leadership’s commitment to raising awareness and a meaningful understanding of the changes made will help prepare and activate staff for the next phases of the transformation journey.

Organizations with effective communication strategies understand that it is important to use communication not only as a mechanism to inform people about changes, but also to celebrate individual and team achievements. This can be done through internal channels such as collaborative communication platforms, newsletters and internal recognition. It also helps to leverage external channels such as social media and LinkedIn to spread success.

By frequently celebrating achievements and innovation, you reinforce role model behavior and gain grassroots momentum for change initiatives.

Strategy and planning: Manage risk and create resilience through succession planning

Despite all the work organizations do to retain employees in roles critical to transformational success, employees are still leaving. They may be making personal choices that have nothing to do with their commitment to their company. But what if a key executive or a group of critical programmers choose to do other work? Is the company’s transformation hurting?

Among our client population, leaders and laggards differ significantly in how they conduct succession planning. Those left behind do not understand the risk associated with their human capital and often do not create succession plans to absorb exits from critical IT roles. And by not having this plan, business and IT operations can be disrupted.

The first step to addressing this situation is to make sure you understand the skills and competencies you have across your organizations. Prepare a risk assessment that assesses the impact on operational and business continuity in the event of a significant departure. From risk assessment, you can create a succession plan and set up cross-training plans to ensure skill levels in critical areas are backed up within the organization.

Leaders often go a step further. Advanced organizations with highly functional capability plans have a keen awareness of where these critical roles lie in new application areas. They establish mechanisms to identify and reward high performers in these critical areas.