Employee skills and digital transformation: preliminary insights from a case study

Recent technological innovations are reshaping the work-life and the workplace. Advances in automation and information and communication technology (ICT) drove scholars to identify the skills required for a competitive workforce. We analysed empirical data, collected from a multinational firm, through the lenses of the situational awareness approach, with the aim of investigating managers’ awareness about the relevance of digital skills to undertake a digitalization processes and whether this awareness differs across departments within the same organization. This study leads to three main contributions: (i) managers consider it essential to have a clear digital strategy in order to undertake digital transformation initiatives; (ii) managers consider it quite relevant to implement proper training initiatives both for acquiring and maintaining DS inside the organization and for fostering informal learning among senior experts and new employees; (iii) regardless of the business department, managers are often not properly aware of the DS required for a digital transformation process.