Dive Brief:
- Leading organizations put more investment into technology that enables new forms of working, and work across department functions, than other organizations, according to a December report by PwC and experience management platform Qualtrics.
- More than 65% of IT executives surveyed by the companies said they expected at least a quarter of their workforces to work from home permanently after the pandemic. While investments in video conferencing are "the norm" for most organizations, leading firms have also invested in workflow automation tools such as Jira and ServiceNow, as well as cloud-based collaboration tools like Google Workspace and Office365, per the report.
- Employee engagement has also emerged as a priority, with 67% of leading organizations reporting that they made new investments in listening and feedback systems. Employee feedback has helped guide IT investment overall; 95% of leading organizations surveyed in the report said they improved existing technology as a result of employee feedback during COVID-19.
Dive Insight:
2020 marked a dramatic shift in IT investment priorities with the rise of remote work, but the year also impacted talent management operations over the long term. Industry analysts noted, for example, the rise of automated workflows and processes that accelerated during the pandemic.
On a practical level, employees in many organizations were asked to shift to new tech platforms overnight in some cases. Nearly a year into the pandemic, however, it's clear that transition has not always been seamless. An October survey of workers by The Harris Poll found a majority of workers faced at least one challenge when using software platforms to do their jobs.
A lack of training can make such issues worse. In spite of the increased need for digital transformation in the past year, companies may at times overestimate the level of training they provide to employees, according to a recent IBM Institute for Business Value report. This, in turn, may fuel employee skepticism about organizational commitment to workers, IBM said.
