Taking a Digital-First Approach to Work

The digital world has become commonplace for most businesses and companies that are successful today. Digital provides organizations with an unlimited amount of potential and opportunity, especially if businesses use a digital-first approach in their everyday dealings. Here are ways that you can make it easier for your organization to transition into its new approach. 

What is a Digital-First Approach?

A digital-first strategy, or “digital by default” strategy, is a term that is pretty self-explanatory. It means that businesses push more toward organizing in a digital environment rather than a traditional one. However, it’s important to note that a digital-first culture does not want to eliminate traditional storage mediums. For example, books, paper records, etc. Still play an important role in the business world, usually in the sales department. 

What a digital-first strategy does is outline the importance of having a more diverse and broad approach that can take advantage of digital elements whenever possible. This means learning about the importance of cloud-based storage, internet marketing and sales, and other digital concepts. Focusing on these elements will help businesses stay competitive and keep expanding on platforms that have rapid growth potential. 

For example, more than half of all online sales are not made from a computer, but rather a phone or tablet. 

And now, a majority of deals and business interactions are done completely within a digital environment. This includes online sales, email communication and more. Having a digital-first approach means that important information should be stored in a digital environment first, and then backed up with physical copies. 

Using physical storage mediums and transactions (such as sales) will still serve an important part but tend to be more of a backup to an expanded digital storage. 

Strategies to Develop a Digital-First Approach

If you are interested in creating your own digital-first strategy for your organization, it’s helpful to understand some basic steps you should take in order to make the process easier. The concepts found below will help you create an operational model that can make your organization stand out from the rest, digitally. 

1. Reskill your employees. 

While many employees are well aware of the digital landscape and digital changes occurring in an organization and in the world, the typical way of working is waiting for the IT department to drive change through digital systems and associated training rather than being proactive and learning by themselves. 

Many employees do not realize that they hold a lot of power to increase the productivity gains from digital technologies. The more each employee understands about digital technology, the more they can contribute and take initiative in the workplace to make positive changes. Consider utilizing a remote employee training platform such as 1Huddle, so your employees can train whenever they have time, wherever they are. 

2. Foster a digital mindset. 

A digital mindset is when you instinctively look for a digital solution to any problem that presents itself first. In order to develop this, you must rewire your brain to think differently than traditionally. You can either do this organically, where the changes take place over many years, or you can accelerate it through simulating different workplace experiences using immersive digital simulations. These offer experiential learning approaches, which helps employees learn, practice and exercise a digital-first mindset and associated behaviors. 

3. Implement a continuous and effortless learning approach.

Technology will keep evolving at a rapid pace, so it’s important that employees get into a rhythm of learning. The ability to unlearn and relearn should be second nature, just as streamlined as it is for those who are in high school.

4. Build your brand story.

All of the digital content that you put out online should have one goal: to emphasize your branding as a business. Always remember that your digital-first strategy when it comes to online interactions should enhance your online branding, help you stand out from your competitors and help you attract more clients. 

Take some time to think about the type of story you want to tell, including the details, and use this information as a backbone for all of your content creation and digital transformation steps. 

5. Set up your workplace ecosystem to develop a digital culture and a digital way of working.

Your digital culture is formed through everyday practices and these everyday practices come from leadership behaviors. Company leaders should be focused on digital ways of thinking and problem solving which can help form new digital work habits within the organization, which therefore leads to a more digital way of working. 

Your existing employees are the key to driving transformation within your organization since they will understand the company from the inside out. They are already familiar with its strategy, purpose, strengths and weaknesses. Giving them the understanding of important digital technologies will help leverage them to adopt a digital-first mindset.

This is the best way for any organization to stay competitive and in the loop. Your experienced employees, with their institutional knowledge, can take better advantage of becoming upskilled and supported digitally, will then become unconsciously skilled digitally and will be able to position your organization to be ahead of the competition in a continuously evolving digital era. 

Level Up Your Team With 1Huddle

1Huddle can help you and your team stay ahead of the learning curve. We offer cloud-based employee gamification software. You can customize your content for a seamless experience and all of your employees will be able to access their training anywhere, anytime, and at the push of a button. You can use our game platform to measure their performance and make key decisions on where you should take your gamification strategy next. 

Do you want to learn more about how 1Huddle can help you level up your own workforce? Talk to us today.