Digital fluency of employees as a meta-competence of the future

Digital applications generate 2.5 trillion bytes of data worldwide every day, with a rising tendency. By 2025, the amount of data will grow to 163 zettabytes, which is ten times the value of 2016. The potential benefits of these data volumes for companies - also known as Big Data - are undisputed. Big Data enables companies to make evidence-based decisions, minimize internal and external risks, or optimize processes. In addition, digital technologies enable constant connectivity. In 60 seconds in 2017, over 29 million messages were processed on WhatsApp worldwide, 350,000 tweets were sent on Twitter, and 3.8 million search requests were made on Google. These changes are both opportunities and challenges for companies and employees. On the positive side, employees can increasingly work flexibly and remotely. On the other hand, digital communication technologies blur the boundaries between work and personal life, which can lead to conflicts of goals and interests. A central question for companies in digital transformation is therefore: What competencies enable employees and organizations to minimize the challenge of overwhelm in order to successfully harness the opportunities of digitization?

What is Digital Fluency?

One answer to this question lies in the digital fluency of employees. Digital fluency, also called "Digital Fluency," is the ability to reliably achieve desired goals using digital technologies. A digitally fluent person is adept at using digital technologies. They effortlessly apply digital technologies and understand when and why their use is meaningful and appropriate. Digital fluency is therefore not synonymous with tech-savviness, which merely describes a high preference for technology. According to our definition, digital fluency encompasses three competency areas: (1) Explicit digital knowledge, i.e., basic technical knowledge that enables the use of digital technologies. Similar to a user manual, explicit digital knowledge guides a person on what to do when using digital technologies and how to technically implement it. (2) Implicit digital knowledge, i.e., intuitive decision-making in the use of digital technologies. Intuitively, digitally fluent individuals decide whether an analog or digital approach is more effective, or which technologies should be used in which phase of a process. (3) Digital self-efficacy, i.e., the inner conviction that one actually possesses the necessary competence to achieve desired goals using digital technologies. Individuals who positively assess their own digital performance have stronger intentions to use digital technology.

Promoting Digital Fluency in Companies

How can Digital Fluency be established as a core competency in companies? Due to the multidimensionality of the construct, an approach within human resource management and especially personnel development with a three-stage objective seems sensible: (1) Building a digital infrastructure: Explicit knowledge can primarily be ensured by establishing a digital infrastructure within a company. A digital infrastructure starts with providing digital technologies and also includes extensive training and support offerings. Employees thus have access to digital technologies and learn their technical application through instructions. (2) Building a culture of playful exploration: Central to the development of implicit digital competencies is a specific corporate culture that allows for an experimental approach to digital technologies. Only through experimentation, failure, and restarting can individuals understand which behaviors lead to success under which circumstances. Iterative learning experiences enable individuals to develop accurate action strategies in the tension between "analog versus digital." Playfully introducing individuals to digital technologies thus promotes the emergence of implicit digital knowledge. (3) Increasing digital self-efficacy through empowerment: To increase your digital self-efficacy, employees should ultimately be supported and empowered by their leaders. This is best achieved through "Empowering Leadership," i.e., sharing power and responsibility with employees and increasing their level of autonomy and responsibility. By doing so, employees are empowered by their leaders to independently and autonomously test new technologies and further develop them as needed. Empowering Leadership thus creates the necessary structural and psychological framework for positive competency experiences and increases digital self-efficacy.

Outlook - Successfully Managing the Digital Transformation

For companies and leaders, the digital transformation should not only be understood as a technical challenge, but also focus on the competencies of employees. Only with digitally fluent employees who possess high explicit and implicit knowledge, as well as a belief in digital self-efficacy, can the digital transformation be successfully managed. Therefore, companies should systematically invest in the development of these digital competencies in their employees.