The Role Of HR Management In The Digital Transformation Paths Of Organizations

Starting and managing a Digital Transformation path in the company does not only mean equipping yourself with innovative tools and methodologies but also acting simultaneously on culture, involvement and communication between people to make them aware protagonists of the change.

The world is changing and evolving. He always has, but never with the speed with which it is happening today. Through a whole series of events, natural and otherwise, we are witnessing an acceleration of technological development. Innovation in organizations also affects people and the way they work. It is legitimate to ask what role HR Management has today when it comes to digital transformation in the company.

What Is Meant By Digital Transformation

Recently, the European Schoolnet (2020) defined digital transformation as “the process of adopting and integrating digital technologies into daily life, social relationships and economic sectors, with the aim of improving the quality of life and competitiveness globally”. Following this perspective and bringing it into the organizational world, digital transformation is a process of adapting and adopting technologies to improve or renew business processes, business models and customer relationships.

The use of the latest generation technological solutions allows us to obtain a quantity of data and information unthinkable in the past and to be able to automate not only the processing processes, but also, to some extent, the decision-making ones. For these reasons, digitalization has become an imperative for many companies and requires a cultural change to adapt and remain competitive.

I Investments And Factors Of Success And Failure In The Innovation Path

According to a report by the International Data Corporation (2022), 1.8 trillion dollars were spent globally on digital transformation projects in 2022 alone, an increase of 17% compared to 2021. However, a very alarming fact concerns the failure rate of digital transformations: according to an article published by Harvard Business Review (Bonnet, 2022), the percentage of these projects that do not reach the initial objectives varies from 70% to 95%, with an average of 87.5%.

But what are the causes that lead to such “disastrous” data? From the Assochange observatory (2021), it emerged that the leading causes of failure of digital projects refer to more than the methodological nature of how the transformation is approached but rather to factors linked to culture, involvement and communication between people during the project.

These results highlight that Digital Transformation projects are complex because they require, on the one hand, well-structured “hard” skills, but at the same time, they cannot ignore deep attention to “soft” factors. Whether you start with a single process, a department or the entire organization, you need to ensure that all individuals involved have gained the same level of awareness and have made a commitment to do their part in the project.

The Pillars Of Change In The Company

Tanya Boundarouk, professor of Human Resource Management and chair of the HRM department at the University of Twente, highlighted in her articles the importance of addressing digital transformations by focusing on three main factors :

• Technological
• Organizational
• Humans

The problem encountered is that organizations facing digital transformation challenges commonly focus mainly on the first dimension, understood as the need to update or install software and consequently work on the infrastructural part of IT. Sometimes, you are also asked to supervise the organizational part since companies understand that by changing processes and modifying tools, that area is also impacted (hence positions, roles, organization charts and responsibilities).

Usually, only as a last resort is a request to “put people at the center of the project” also presented. A question arises spontaneously: what is human within the procedural, technological and organizational factors? The answer is minimal! These ingredients have a very technical nature and represent ‘organizational artifacts’ built ad hoc to generate business, which does not take into account the human condition, how the person goes through the processes, experiences the organization and uses the tools.

Putting People At The Center of Digital Transformation In The Company: This Is The Role Of The HR Department

In this regard, the role of the HR function in digitization projects must be to work at a cultural level by overseeing the relationships between the people involved, building the skills necessary for conscious adoption of technology and developing a proactive mindset to manage difficulties and the challenges of transformation.

Change projects, and especially digital transformation ones, bring with them an emotional load and responsibility that is very often underestimated; whenever something happens at an organizational level that involves the generation, collision and loss of relationships and emotions, the Human Resources function can therefore represent an added value by providing an expert look at these dynamics.

Simplified management or even non-management of these issues generates an inevitable impact on the trajectory of the change that one wishes to pursue. A further point to pay attention to is that these projects, if approached with a cultural focus, represent a significant opportunity: the methodologies and approaches that are built together with people in the change are not limited to digital but can be transferred as a model also in other areas of the company.

Also Read: Five Good Intentions For HR Management