Employees key to successful digital transformation in Singapore
- Shawn Liew
Employees’ resistance to change remains the biggest obstacle to organisations in Singapore making a successful digital transformation.
This is despite 95% of business leaders and 89% of employees recognising the importance of acquiring basic technology skills to support digital transformation at the workplace, reported NTUC LearningHub’s Digital Transformation Report 2023.
Anthony Chew, Chief Core Skills Officer, NTUC LearningHub, said, “It is encouraging to see that both business leaders and employees recognise the importance and need for digital transformation. However, findings show that there is resistance on the ground. Knowing exactly what to transform and how to execute the digital transformation plans can be daunting to leaders. As for employees, one of the main reasons for workforce resistance to digital transformation is their concern over job security.”
Besides job security (42%), employees are also concerned about their own lack of technology skills (47%), the risk of cyberattacks (43%), a lack of adaptability (35%), and digital transformation being unable to improve daily work (29%).
While expressing their concerns, most employees (88%) say they are comfortable with using technologies and tools needed to support digital transformation at their workplace, if given the opportunities to acquire the necessary skills.
In the past two years, nearly a third of business leaders (27%) have not enrolled their employees in any training related to digital transformation, while almost half of employees (43%) are unaware of the training programmes available in the market.
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Chew added, “Thus, it is about building a conducive environment for workplace learning to empower employees with new competencies, assure them of job security, and enable them to pivot into adjacent job roles within the organisation. More importantly, leaders at the workplace need to ensure that every employee is aligned with the organisation’s business strategy and implementation plans towards digital transformation.”
