This world is getting digital-faster than we could imagine. Technology is taking new shapes every day, molding according to the people’s needs, bringing us new ideas in the form of innovation.
One such advancement seen in recent years is the digital workforce, estimated to become pretty popular among marketers in the coming time. Now, before we get started with any further discussion, let’s know some basics about a digital workforce.
What is a digital workforce?
The term might sound a bit like science fiction. Google about it, and you will find a myriad of people stressing the importance of a digital workforce, but, ironically, no one knows what it means exactly.
In a broader term, it refers to a team of AI and software that work along with the human employees to perform a task in a way that it requires an input of less labour and yields faster results.
Is there a difference between a bot and a digital worker?
Though the terms might sound a bit similar, they are different in real life. Software robots or bots are task-oriented and function as directed or programmed. A digital worker, on the other hand, supplements human activity.
It draws a pattern out of the steps taken in performing a task, applies machine learning, improves from experience, and delivers better results without being programmed extensively for it.
How to grow your business
Digital working is an amalgamation of AI, analytics, and machine learning and comes with virtual employees that, in some context, work better than their human counterparts.
They make the business processes much faster, perform automation and analytics, and accomplish IT operations smoother with very little to no human supervision.
Any startup that introduces the digital workforce to its marketing strategies effectively leverages its employees’ work efficiency.
How to manage
As you might decipher the importance of the digital workforce in the development of a company, you might understand why it is so important to shape and manage our strategies in a way that can multiply the productivity of digital workers.
Here is what you need to do to never let your digital strategies go out of your hands:
Build a vision, not just a workplace
You cannot suddenly transform your traditional workforce into a digital one if your business culture doesn’t support it. Having a digital workforce is, thus, not enough. You need to shape the vision and work ethic of your employees effectively. You need to bring employees of all levels on board and start working according to a digital platform beforehand.
Know AI’s limitations and bridge the gaps
Folks often perceive AI to be more mature than it actually is. One needs to overcome this misconception for a successful business operation. Understanding the areas where AI lacks and deploying a human brain there to handle such situations can serve the purpose.
Hire people who can employ their experience and expertise for business processes, and let AI assist them in repetitive and routine tasks via automation.
Pursue technology, don’t just embrace it
Don’t just use technology to assist your workers, utilize it to transform the way you operate your workplace. Infusing tech developments in various areas like communication, banking, financial reporting, customer relationship management, etc. accelerates many manual operations and yields more cost-effective results for a company.
Develop a change management plan
Recognise that change is a dominant part of your strategy. AI and automation can transform entire business operations. Thus, never overlook the downsides of your digital workforce as it can later cause disruptions in your startup. The negative consequences of digitalization can pile up and decrease your employee productivity up to a large extent.
Avoid AI biases issues
AI Bias can creep into business practices in various ways and can lead to unintended results while managing a digital workforce. These biases stem from the person coding them. This flawed data can cause the AI to behave in a biased way when performing a task.
These implicit biases may be racial, behavioural, etcetera. One must keep a strict check on their conscious and unconscious bias while training an AI to avoid any such mishap.
Say yes to BYOD
The productivity of an employee escalates faster when they get to work on the devices that they used to at home. It has two advantages- one, the employees feel more familiar and work faster; two, you get to cut the cost of buying those devices for your workplace! You can also monitor their work remotely via employee monitoring tools like EmpMonitor, Task Doctor, Monitask, etcetera.
Establish a strong protocol for governance
Governance is very crucial at any digital workplace as it involves AI and software with very little intelligence of its own. Companies must centralise their workflow management and surveillance. There should be a single place for the visibility of entire locations and systems. This way, you can identify disruptions fairly quickly and deploy fixes for the issue fairly quickly.
Recognise the importance of communication
It is one of the most crucial, yet most ignored skills by capitalists. Digitalisation doesn’t imply to eradicating the need to communicate.
The digital market comes with a lot of challenges, and the employees need to maintain sound communication to overcome all that. Data can never survive in the absence of knowledge. Focus on establishing a stable communication to bring out more innovation and productivity over time.
Learn at the moment
Hiring people for their skills is clever unless you find them unable to adapt to upcoming trends and new technologies. The digital is continually evolving, and one must know how to learn faster to keep up with its pace. As an employer, not only should you look for such individuals, but also develop this ability yourself.
Let loose
Employees today are more concerned about their flexible shifts than they are for their job titles- it’s a fact. The usual methods of management don’t work when going digital. Many tools have made communication and engagement more easygoing.
Utilise them to let your employees participate in decision-making processes, focus more on the number of tasks each of them performed instead of counting the working hours, monitor their growth, and so on.
Know what works and what doesn’t
As already stated above, traditional strategies don’t walk the digital path. It doesn’t matter if you graduated from Oxford University or a local one, you may never succeed in the online market if you don’t focus on micro-management. Introducing new and upcoming technologies is not enough in an online workforce. You first need to understand what leads to conversions and what drives sales.
Wrapping it up
AI and software may be matured enough for your everyday technology, but they don’t possess the capability to substitute human intellect and intelligence. Digital workers carry the potential to effectively reduce your mental and physical labour up to a large extent. Yet, they come with some limitations that you need to deal with for the best results at your workplace.
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