Are organisations equipped for the digital skills of the future?

Machine learn­ing, blockchain, the meta­verse – just try­ing to keep up with new tech­nolo­gies and the pace of dig­i­tal change can be exhaust­ing, let alone future-proof­ing your organ­i­sa­tion with the right tal­ent to take advan­tage of it. But no one wants to be a dinosaur among uni­corns – a readi­ness for the tech­nolo­gies of today and tomor­row is vital for the longevi­ty and suc­cess of any organ­i­sa­tion, whether you’re in retail or finan­cial ser­vices.

Salesforce’s recent Glob­al Dig­i­tal Skills Index sought to under­stand exact­ly how skilled and pre­pared employ­ees at organ­i­sa­tions across the globe feel in today’s com­plex dig­i­tal world. It sur­veyed 23,000 work­ers across 19 coun­tries to deter­mine their lev­el of dig­i­tal skills readi­ness – an assess­ment made by ask­ing respon­dents how pre­pared they feel for the future, how they would rate their dig­i­tal skill lev­els, whether they have access to the right resources to devel­op skills, and whether they are active­ly learn­ing or upskilling. 

Across all coun­tries, the index found a glob­al dig­i­tal readi­ness score of just 33%, with some coun­tries far­ing bet­ter than oth­ers. While India came out on top with a score of 63%, the UK’s dig­i­tal readi­ness score came in at just 21%, with only 30% of respon­dents feel­ing very pre­pared with work­place dig­i­tal skills now, and only 20% feel­ing very pre­pared for the skills they’ll need in five years’ time. Although reports of a UK skills gap are wide­spread, this incred­i­bly low fig­ure may come as a sur­prise. It indi­cates a huge gap between what organ­i­sa­tions need to stay ahead of, or even in step with, the curve, and the real­i­ty of where they are right now.

Peter Schwartz, SVP for strate­gic plan­ning and chief futures offi­cer, Sales­force, explains: “There’s a gap between the fron­tier of inno­va­tion and the skills nec­es­sary to use those inno­va­tions. That in itself is not new. But what is new is the scope of that inno­va­tion, how wide­spread it is, and how it has dif­fused in every aspect of life. It is hard to do almost any­thing these days with­out some form of dig­i­tal inter­ac­tion.”

Dig­i­tal readi­ness isn’t just about organ­i­sa­tions stay­ing com­pet­i­tive in their respec­tive indus­tries, clos­ing the skills gap is vital for advance­ments in our soci­ety and for the econ­o­my, with PwC esti­mat­ing that address­ing the gap could boost UK GDP by £87bn by 2030.

Jacque­line de Rojas, techUK pres­i­dent, says: “There is an urgent need for action to fix the dig­i­tal skills cri­sis. Salesforce’s Dig­i­tal Skills Index shows how unpre­pared our glob­al soci­ety and econ­o­my are in front of this cri­sis and stress­es the need for col­lab­o­ra­tion if we are to retrain employ­ees and pre­pare the future gen­er­a­tions for the jobs of tomor­row.”

One of the stand-out find­ings of the sur­vey is the gap between employ­er and employ­ee con­fi­dence in dig­i­tal readi­ness. While glob­al­ly a rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el (61%) of board-lev­el work­ers feel very pre­pared with the nec­es­sary dig­i­tal skills, just 33% of indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors feel the same way.

And while 54% of board-lev­el work­ers are very active­ly train­ing, only 38% of mid­dle man­age­ment and 19% of indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors are doing the same. It seems that the resources avail­able to those in more senior posi­tions are not acces­si­ble to all, and that, for many organ­i­sa­tions, there’s a long way to go in pro­mot­ing and encour­ag­ing train­ing – espe­cial­ly in those more junior ranks.

Once you drill down into the detail, there is also a clear gap between the impor­tance of spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal skills and the cur­rent skill lev­el of work­ers. The index ranked skill impor­tance from one to five (with five being more impor­tant) and skill lev­el rat­ing from one to three (with one being begin­ner, and three being advanced). Across the board, almost all skills are seen as of high impor­tance, yet most respon­dents report­ed begin­ner lev­el skills.

Of course, it’s not just work-spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal skills that are impor­tant and need boost­ing in the work­force. Tech­nol­o­gy is part a huge part of our every­day lives, includ­ing our day-to-day jobs. Being able to nav­i­gate the apps on your phone or under­stand the nuances of social media comes with the ter­ri­to­ry of being a mem­ber of soci­ety in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Very few sur­vey respon­dents ranked their skills in every­day tech­nol­o­gy as advanced, with even the sup­pos­ed­ly tech-savvy Gen­er­a­tion Z feel­ing under­con­fi­dent.

So how can organ­i­sa­tions boost learn­ing? Many organ­i­sa­tions have found great suc­cess with dig­i­tal learn­ing over the last cou­ple of years, with a McK­in­sey sur­vey find­ing it the most pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful skill-build­ing strat­e­gy for com­pa­nies in 2020. And while a lot of dig­i­tal learn­ing uptake will have been due to the pan­dem­ic and remote work­ing, now it’s tried and test­ed and remote work­ing prac­tices seem set to con­tin­ue, it’s an attrac­tive option for many organ­i­sa­tions going for­ward.

Salesforce’s free Trail­head online learn­ing plat­form, for exam­ple, has helped over 3.9 mil­lion peo­ple learn skills for the future of work. The plat­form is part of Salesforce’s com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple from all back­grounds to learn dig­i­tal skills and get a foothold in the tech indus­try.

As Zahra Bahrololou­mi, UKI CEO, Sales­force, explains: “Reskilling is clear­ly a nation­al pri­or­i­ty and we all have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to help peo­ple nav­i­gate learn­ing and equip them to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties of a dig­i­tal-first future. By using our scale, ecosys­tem, and resources as a plat­form for change, we can pro­vide alter­na­tive path­ways to train­ing, often free and online, to ensure that our increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed world stands for suc­cess across all of soci­ety.”

It’s clear that, with the right tools, a com­mit­ment to learn­ing, and a healthy dose of urgency, organ­i­sa­tions can set them­selves on a path to embrace, rather than fear, the tech advance­ments of the future.

Explore the full results of the Glob­al Dig­i­tal Skills Index. To find out how Sales­force is pow­er­ing the work­force of tomor­row, vis­it trailhead.salesforce.com.