IT Talent Drives Digitalization

Bridge the digital skills gap with the right IT talent strategy

Digitalization brings new talent needs

Digitalization creates new opportunities across the enterprise and shifts expectations for how IT supports the rest of the business. To achieve digital business's strategic goals, CIOs must make the commitment to invest in building a digital-ready workforce but many are not sure how to get started. 

Build a digital-ready workforce

CIOs and IT leaders can no longer take a slow, reactive response in building digital capabilities. CIOs must rethink how they approach the workforce transformation through a holistic, integrated strategy.  A strategic workforce plan is critical to building a continuous pipeline of high-caliber talent.  

Skills: recruit for technical versatility, seek staff with the ability to adapt and work in more versatile technology roles. Competencies: Focus on collaboration and engagement, prepare staff to flex models of working and collaborate directly with business partners. Career paths: Create experience-based careers, offer new pathways that give staff experience for growth. Team structure: Build fusion teams, mix delivery teams with IT and staff from other functions to embrace agile scale. Mindset: Foster a climate of openness, promote appropriate risk-taking and adaptability to digital business models. Inclusion: Invest in diversity, strengthen retention and development for women and other under-represented groups.
The secret to digital is analog. By analog we mean people: people who are collaborative, agile, analytical, innovative, and who have the ability and desire to exploit emerging technologies for better business outcomes.

Tina Nunno

Vice President and Gartner Fellow, Gartner Research

Insights you can use

With the right digital talent management practices, CIOs can build a high-impact digital workforce that will enhance digital business performance and the customer experience.

Beat the digital talent shortage

Demand for highly skilled digital talent has outpaced supply, creating an era of hypercompetition. Learn how to expand your recruitment strategies to include nontraditional talent sources and cultivate key employee competencies within your existing workforce. 

Develop the right digital skills and behaviors

Digitalization requires greater collaboration between IT and other parts of the business. Discover how to develop the openness, agility, commitment to coaching and digital business acumen that help cross-functional teams drive value.

A talent roadmap is a critical part of your digital strategy

IT leaders without an effective workforce management strategy will not be able to meet business leaders’ demand for new and continuously changing IT support. CIOs must partner with HR to develop and evolve their talent management strategy to match the changing IT talent landscape. 

One common misconception is that going digital is about implementing a set of technologies that get you to a digital outcome. And that actually isn’t the case. Granted, technology is an enabler to a set of outcomes, but unless you really think through how you rewrite your company versus rewrite your software, you’re going to miss the desired end state.

Paul Chapman

CIO, Box

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