Training new employees using digital adoption tools can add significant value to staff development and improve digital literacy across an organization.
Work culture has evolved to be digital-first. Today’s organizations and employees must be able to function effectively in digital environments and sometimes the learning curve is not linear. Digital tools improve employee productivity, but require a different level of discernment to complete even simple tasks until business processes become intuitive using workplace software. Even after evaluating reference materials, the quality of instructions can impact how well employees perform and getting proficient often takes constant repetition.
However, nearly everyone needs to become a digital specialist. Whether you work in technology or any other industry, staff digital literacy skills in the workplace are an intensifying requirement. Even educational institutions are providing a pathway to software-related training that companies are seeking after.
Training New Staff for the Future of Work
The percentage of people one day doing jobs that don’t even exist yet is going to be 85% by 2030. This is according to Dell in a recent Forbes article on the top 10 in-demand skills a decade from now. Plus, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), “more than half of the jobs that we do in 2030 will require an understanding of digital technology.”
The list includes skills that are required to stay competitive even today. New employees have to remain relevant as the future of work that’s here today continues to evolve tomorrow. A few of these skills include… A few of the listed skills included the need to understand technology tools that augment routine tasks or processes, those that offer more virtual collaboration, as well as the need for heightened data analysis skills.
Probably most prominent on the list is the ability to take in new knowledge and develop a mentality of lifelong learning as this year’s cutting-edge tools become outdated the next. This calls for even more training opportunities for your organization. It’s critical to offer training to new employees who can immediately become digital adoption advocates and lead by example.
The Rise of Digital Adoption Practitioners
While IT managers and system administrators can help oversee, manage, and maintain organizational software tools, it takes collaboration and ownership at the department level to ensure that users don’t require constant IT support. This can put a strain on resources as companies add more talent as they scale. Many times, you may find that low software adoption rates aren’t always due to user onboarding issues but rather the lack of proficiency or business process continuity at the management level as companies grow.
What is a Digital Adoption Manager?
It’s important to develop a network of system super users to continuously improve business operations by democratizing knowledge sharing. That starts with having a digital adoption manager own the digital adoption strategy for your company. But it doesn’t end there.
It takes leaders in every department, whether it’s IT leading digital transformation, project managers facilitating production, or change managers prioritizing training updates as part of an established organizational Center of Excellence (CoE). Several company stakeholders rely on a stable and error-free flow of work to create business continuity. Sometimes the easiest people to train to be exceptional software users are those who are newest to the organization.
A Few Ways You Can Train New staff to be Software Super Users
- Introduce new employees to the digital adoption manager or digital adoption practitioner who can share how the digital adoption strategy they’ve developed can help them extract the most value from the tools available to them to excel in their role.
- Use a digital adoption platform to provide contextual step-by-step walk throughs of business processes to guide new staff through business processes and tasks. This ensures that new employees develop the same skillset.
- Have an open door policy for questions related to training and onboarding. Sometimes new employees are concerned about appearing like they haven’t caught on to how a system or tool works and rather struggle through it than appear incapable to their manager.
- Establishing Just-in-Time Training (JIT) using a digital adoption platform can facilitate new employee access to software applications wherever they are. This approach can also boost user proficiency. It’s important to mention that choosing the right DAP product framework to match IT strategies can impact JIT success.
- By empowering new employees to become super users of the software tools they use every day, they can improve digital literacy across the company when given the right toolset to achieve that change systematically.
Staff Development as a Competitive Edge
It’s no question that redefining staff training should be a priority. Not just universities and organizations, but countries globally are embracing the importance of internet-based initiatives to boost digital literacy. Online learning is growing exponentially to train the next generation of digital workers.
Using Digital Adoption Platforms to Train new staff
You can implement comprehensive training for business processes across all departments that impact new employees. In fact, there are many opportunities that digital adoption training can offer to make processes more efficient, but we’ll focus on these four areas.
- Using digital adoption platforms (DAPs) to provide in-app walkthroughs of procedures
- Setting up automations for redundant tasks that can simultaneously improve user experience
- Provide guidance that can reduce error rates and maintain data quality
Plus, digital adoption training can help department leaders lead projects more effectively and improve business process KPIs by having access to software analytics. Digital adoption platforms include analytics that can identify wasted time and reduce inconsistencies or inefficiencies in process outputs.
Lasting Impacts of Digital Adoption Training on Digital Literacy
The way to continuous improvement (CI) by improving digital literacy across your company includes creating and fostering a strong culture of learning. The process also doesn’t stop with onboarding new employees during training. Successful companies that are equipped for the future of work include constant opportunities to upskill and reskill their employees.
Another impactful way that organizations are adding value to staff development is by using digital adoption platforms to truly augment employee capabilities through unified on-screen guidance and a feedback loop to support CI initiatives. You’ll find that a DAP can improve software performance, increase its internal value and ROI for the company, and retain existing employees and it starts by investing in your new employees.
More Ways to Train New Staff and Boost Digital Literacy
Putting together a strategy to support digital adoption training initiatives should involve key stakeholders across your organization that work together with the digital adoption manager. However, we’ve pulled together some ideas for how to put that strategy into action.
You can find more ways to improve knowledge management and implement learning solutions for new employees by downloading our whitepaper.