Digital Transformation and Skill Acquisition: Enablers and Barriers for Today's Workforce

Introduction

The accelerating digital transformation creates challenges for employers in hiring people with the skills, competencies and knowledge needed to thrive in a changing working environment. European skills and jobs survey conducted by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (2021a, p. 11) has stated that each fifth European employee needs to have advanced digital skills (mainly innovation, communication, numeracy and literacy skills) for doing his job. Skills gaps in the labour market are considered the primary barrier (55.4%) to adopting new technologies (Zahidi et al., 2020, p. 35). Moreover, there is a disparity between the skills acquired by employees and the skills required to do their job (European Commission, 2019). Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, organisations whose business could be carried out digitally moved towards remote working environments. Teltscher (2020, p. 1) claims that “the accelerated speed towards digitisation in the corporate sector goes hand in hand with a growing demand for employees with specialised digital skills who need to install, maintain and secure information and communication systems and provide technical support to the workforce”. Considering that the relevance of employee professional activities and related skills is constantly changing due to the dynamic development of digital technologies, employee training and learning are becoming a topical issue in the digital era.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its wide-ranging impacts have accelerated digital skills demand in most occupations in various sectors, especially non-ICT ones. Effective digital skills have proven to drive resilience, helping workers and entire organisations adapt to the new realities. The share of digital skills on the total skills demand in online job advertisements has grown from 20% in 2019 to 23% in 2020 (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, 2020). It makes digital skills a cluster with the most pronounced shift. Furthermore, the share of individuals with moderate or advanced digital skills varies in countries across Europe. For example, in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the share of individuals with intermediate or advanced digital skills exceed 40% compared to Bulgaria or Romania, where it is less than 20% (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, 2021b).

In addition, Teltscher (2020, p. 1) states that “the pandemic spurred innovation in digital tools and platforms and increased digitalisation of business processes, products and services. As the pandemic has continued, there is a growing focus on the use of digital technologies”. From the managing human resource point of view, various tools for communication, sharing information and managing knowledge and teams, and organising remote work were implemented. Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) technologies are one of the most often used. It is software that enables enterprise communication in real-time and asynchronous cooperation proficiency. As an example, MS Teams can be used (Ilag, 2021). Specifically in the research and academic environment, working remotely will usually have to become familiar with more sophisticated tools than cell phones and chat channels. One example is Git, an open-source version-control system (Hunter, 2019). Furthermore, microcredentials are traced in modern companies. Microcredentials are described as a new way to build the profile of the individual skills (portfolio) by learning at their own pace and according to their priorities (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training,, 2021c). All these factors mentioned above put a high requirement on companies’ management of all levels.

This chapter aims to identify the companies' attitude to the expedited digital transformation and specify their employees' digital skills considering the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In this chapter, the authors are going to concentrate on answers to the following research questions:

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  Question 1: What digital competencies were identified as those needed for current employees, and how do they acquire them?

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  Question 2: What are the main barriers to closing skills gaps and the employees' digital skills development at work?

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  Question 3: How has the Covid-19 pandemic changed the intensity of using digital technologies, and in connection with it, changed the need for employees' digital skills and their training and development?