One-in-six employees to be affected by digitisation

An increasing number of businesses are asking employees to learn new digital skills, according to a new report.

The new research, by software company Proactis, shows that 90% of firms have started to redeploy, refocus, re-skill, or up-skill their employees.

From improving customer experience to boosting back-office performance, the digitisation of business processes will affect 15.3% of staff on average.

As major companies are set to invest £123 billion in digital resources, nearly 5 times increase in one year with an average investment of £21 billion in 2021.

The report underlines the impact of Covid, as pre-pandemic figures showed that only one in three larger businesses had invested in digital technology. Presently, that as risen three-fold to 93% as lockdown incentivised companies to allocate funds into digital transformation.

Top four reasons for digitalisation were found to be: increase efficiencies (23%), improve profitability (21%), better compliance with regulation (19%) and decrease costs (19%).

Ilija Ugrinic, UK market director at Proactis, said: “The very process of switching to digital business models is causing major companies to rethink how they use their talent.

“No matter the sector, businesses investing in digital evolution and transformation must support their employees with the right training to ensure adoption.

“Without this, an investment with the capacity to drive growth can fall flat and businesses will fail in adapting to the ever-changing evolving opportunities and challenges they are faced with.”

A third of major UK businesses view adoption of technology or digital processes as the biggest training priority this year.

However, the research has found employees are not fully receiving the training that they need.

This year, UK business leaders will invest 4.3% of annual turnover on a range of departments and services critical to digitally transforming business.

Combat staff shortages

The new study outlined how this digital strategy is being utilised to combat the workforce crisis as one-in-four big companies are digitising recruitment processes to attract new talent.

Other figures reveal that 90% of enterprises have experienced issues related to logistics, cost increases and shortages- 40% of companies with supply chain issues have invested in digital operating systems to address this crisis.

87% of the businesses who answered the survey stated an increase in international trade due to the use of new software and digital processes.