How Digital Transformation Makes It Easier to Find and Keep the Best Talent

There are many digital transformation benefits, from reducing costs to improving product and service quality to enhancing company culture. Digital transformation on a company-wide scale should positively impact every employee, but how groups of employees experience the impact of digital transformation can be quite different. A CEO might be focused on how DX improves the bottom line or supports new growth, an engineer might be excited about an improved workflow and better collaboration tools, and a service technician is looking forward to seeing how a new application supports better customer service.

In our newest survey, the digital transformation benefits frontline and field employees are most excited about is the ability to attract and retain talent. However, for both knowledge employees and executives, it was one of the least chosen options.

This is just one of the distinctions we found between these two groups highlighted in a the new PTC whitepaper “Digital Transformation Strategy: Where Executives and End Users Differ on the Future (and Why it Matters).”

While it could be that the latter groups simply saw more benefit in the other options, it is notable to see such a difference in opinion (see chart below for full results). Especially given that attracting and retaining talent in the manufacturing industry has been and will continue to be one of its biggest challenges. A 2021 survey by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute found that 77% of manufacturers say they will have ongoing difficulties attracting and retaining workers.

Digital transformation produces both a challenge and a solution to this long-term problem. As manufacturing technology evolves, the jobs change, creating new roles and transforming others. If a company invests in IIoT, for example, then they may need to hire or promote/train someone to securely manage all the data. If a company invests in augmented reality, they may need someone to author and develop the new AR experiences that frontline employees will use.

From a challenge perspective, this transformation creates a moving target for skill sets, such as service technicians, software developers, IT, and cybersecurity professionals. As manufacturers adopt Industry 4.0 technologies, there is oftentimes a new skill set required that can be hard to find in the current workforce.

On the other hand, the newly arriving tech-native generation of employees could be attracted to this type of work and trained or reskilled. In fact, 79% of frontline worker respondents wanted to work for a company pursuing digital transformation.

All this to say that digital transformation may not be fully recognized for its potential role in attracting and retaining talent. This blog post will explore how digital transformation supports this benefit.

Understanding Digital Transformation’s Impact on Acquiring and Retaining Talent

Digital transformation is the technology-driven evolution of your operations, product lifecycles, and business models to meet the changing expectations of your customers and workforce. First and foremost, it’s a strategic initiative to modernize your processes, streamline more efficient ways of working, and create new opportunities to provide value to customers – facilitated by digital technology.

While delivering value to customers is an end goal, DX initiatives also improve the employee experience by transforming how work gets done. For example, providing digital tools that facilitate collaboration for remote employees or employing augmented reality that helps frontline employees receive, interpret, and retain critical information faster (making the workforce safer, smarter, and more productive as a result). Supporting and improving the daily tasks of employees through technology is now an essential part of attracting and retaining talent.

The vast majority of Gen Zers – 91% – reported that an employer’s provided technology would be a factor in choosing between job offers. And it makes sense. This generation are digital natives – they’ve grown up with information and technology at their fingertips. To get young professionals in the door – and have them grow within your organization – companies need to be constantly considering and implementing innovative technology and solutions.

Technologies, like augmented reality (AR), create an immersive, interactive work experience that appeals to those that have grown up as digital natives. Offering this type of experiential learning and training can help differentiate a company from competitors. It’s also an excellent way to capture expert knowledge from your existing (but soon-to-be retiring) workforce and accelerate training for inexperienced employees.

Here’s one example: Intertape Polymer Group (IPG), a leading manufacturer of protective packaging, realized its existing training strategy left a skills gap across manufacturing and operations. When the pandemic hit and exacerbated those challenges, IPG’s leadership needed a way to attract new talent and capture expert knowledge before it was too late.

IPG decided to create AR training content that they could use to improve data visibility in the future. Using PTC’s Vuforia Expert Capture, IPG empowers employees of all skill levels with immersive AR experiences for skills development training and improved on-the-job safety.

With a people-focused approach to digital transformation, they worked with employees to ensure they understood how AR would address on-the-job challenges and why it would help attract new talent in a tight labor market.

The manufacturer continues to update and create new digital content so that it is helpful, engaging, and effective for brand new and seasoned employees using it for skills development training.

The Importance of Thinking Expansively about Digital Transformation

When a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, it becomes an entirely different creature. You might be able to see traces of the caterpillar, but it’s not immediately apparent. In its new form, the butterfly reaches new heights – ones it never could have envisioned in its previous version.

Digital transformation is like that, too. As manufacturing companies continue to lean into Industry 4.0 technologies and strategies, they will barely be recognizable to their former selves, yet they’ll be able to do some much more.

As manufacturing faces one of its most persistent challenges – recruiting and retaining talent – digital transformation should play a key role in the solution.

With DX, business leaders often focus on KPIs, time to value, operational efficiency, and reducing costs – and those are all valuable measures of success – but make sure you’re also understanding the impact on employees.