Digital Dexterity – A very interesting concept! While digital dexterity has been around for a while, the impact of it in organizations is now beginning to resonate more. A very good interpretation of digital dexterity has been summed up by Whit Andrews, analyst and vice president at Gartner, when he said “Consumer grade is the new industrial strength.”

Today’s digital workplaces have to be nimble at adopting emerging technologies in day-to-day work to keep employees engaged and productive. When society at large is going through a rapid digital transformation, work and life are not easily discernible any more. The workplace is slowly becoming an extension of our social environment. The best option for bringing in technologies within the enterprise, is to look out for consumer trends and treat employees and partners more like our end consumers. And it is in the best interest of the company to adopt consumer behavior driven digital tools for employees to achieve their goals.

So, what are the easy steps to move towards embracing digital dexterity? How does digital dexterity have an impact on your employees? Here are a few ways that forward-thinking leaders promote in their workplace.

1. Enable people to use their own mobile devices.BYOD should be the norm. Almost all cloud suites allow it. Most importantly, this removes the shackles of being tied to the desk to get work done. And prompt responses always go a long way in improving productivity.
2. Make collaboration informal and asynchronous: While text chats and messengers are in for the long haul, things start getting more interesting with chatbots. In today’s multitasking world we are always handling parallel contexts and being able to communicate asynchronously provides a huge productivity boost.
3. Rollout applications with new style UX (Conversational interface like Alexa, text bots for services, and the likes). The organization’s empathy goes up many folds when you bring in personal voice communication. Employees feel cared for and their participation increases naturally.
4. Promote video-based asynchronous communication:Video is the preferred form of content on the internet and a true digital representation of real-life scenarios. If a picture speaks a thousand words, just imagine how much a video can convey. Video sharing is by far the most effective way to spread tribal knowledge within your company. Your SME’s may be the champions of your company, but by distilling their knowledge and allowing it to go viral through video communications is priceless.
5. Doing Live video:Live video, is video on steroids. Instantly connect with thousands of employees to deliver a message. Let them join virtually in big company events like product launches, summits and developer conferences. There is no better way to engage your employees, than making them feel an intrinsic part of all company communications and activities.