By Shivendra Kumar, Principal Consultant, Shivendra and Co
Infrastructure companies are undergoing digital transformation programs to create new investment opportunities, more efficient operating models, and greater sustainability. While the technologies implemented are important, the most crucial element of this process is actually understanding the impact on your employees. This is referred to as maintaining the human perspective.
In its 2022 report Delivering Outcomes, Infrastructure Australia found that digital transformation will drive productivity and innovation in infrastructure delivery and that digital is a “core enabler to achieving transformational change across the sector”.
The report found that project outcomes could be enhanced by applying a ‘digital by default’ approach, but that the “potential transformative benefits of digital remain largely unharnessed by government and industry stakeholders”.
Throughout the infrastructure sector, the goal of digitisation is always the same: to increase efficiency and minimise unnecessary spending or processes. But how do you make sure your digital transformation attempt does not end futilely?
How do you ensure that your digital transformation actually makes a significant improvement to efficiency so you’re not wasting the money you invested? How do you avoid becoming the construction company that implemented cloud technology for its field staff without actually solving any of their day-to-day problems?
How do you reduce the likelihood of getting to the end of your multimillion- dollar digital transformation project and only using half of the digital tools you introduced?
And how do you not become the business that delivers its digital transformation project six months late because the business is operating well without it? To ensure your construction company does not end up dealing with these issues when undergoing a digital transformation journey, you must maintain the human perspective.
The ‘human perspective’, or in other words, your employee’s perspective and engagement with the digital transformation implementation process, is the most important element of any digital project, and if it’s not prioritised, you’ll see the consequences. Let’s look at how you can maintain the human perspective.
Engage your employees
The human perspective is critical to the success of your digital transformation because without it, employees aren’t encouraged to support the change for the long term. This is important because we’re not just referring to the IT team and vendors that implement or build your system, it’s about getting all of the employees who will end up using this technology on board from the start.
Digital transformation is about more than implementing new technology or applications, it’s a process that involves changing and modernising the habits of employees so they can be more productive. In short, you’re not just giving them new tools, you’re also teaching them how to use those tools properly.
As with other transitions, this process requires a strong commitment. If you are a company director or the person driving this transformation, you need to make it clear to your employees how this digital transition correlates with their needs, as they are the ones on the ground running the day-to-day operations.
If they understand the ‘why’ of what the company is doing, and how it impacts their daily roles, they will be more motivated to ensure its success. If this isn’t communicated properly, some employees could start to feel unsupported, which can result in low morale, then a growing sense of detachment, and finally loss of ‘ownership’.
It’s this scenario that can cost your company great talent and resourceful people – a challenge that is even more prevalent now with industry wide skills shortages and a sector struggling to meet growing construction demand.
This often starts when a company asks employees to change from an in-house built application that has been created on a dependable software platform and has been used for a while, to something completely new, or conversely, when a company won’t give employees the necessary progress update that they need to remain engaged.
Talk to people directly
While more and more construction companies are digitising, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of implementing technology for the sake of it, because it’s what everyone else is doing. For the digitisation process to work, the new technology needs to be solving specific challenges in your business.
