IN a previous organization, my team was asked to study how we can make learning more engaging by incorporating Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) materials for training. After research and several discussions with my team, we realized that use cases of those platforms have not yet evolved enough to cater to our training needs, especially since we were developing soft skills programs. In addition, our Internet bandwidth and infrastructure would not have been able to support the massive data needed to make the platforms work, nor was there an available artificial intelligence software that can mimic the complaints of a customer. We recommended not pursuing VR and AR as learning modalities.
On the other hand, we also had to update our course development tools for making online courses and we recommended getting an industry-standard tool used by reputable learning and development organizations. Since the tool was expensive, my team and I upskilled ourselves using online tutorials and soon enough, we were creating interactive courses with branching scenarios. Some team members even created gamified content which surpassed our client’s expectations. The objective was to make learning more engaging, and we did so without having to jump on the bandwagon of using whatever available technology was trending. So instead of buying expensive equipment, we found better alternatives to increase learning engagement.
With the increasing reliance on technology and the trend of automating almost everything from depositing checks to setting an appointment with your hairdresser, there is a need to filter which ones are really needed by your team. As the steward of your team’s resources, you need to keep an eye on new technological innovations so you can examine which ones are useful for your team.
This is where digital fluency comes in. Digital fluency includes you and your team’s ability to identify and evaluate emerging and existing technologies to improve workload, collaborate with others faster, and use tools and data properly.
Being digitally fluent helps you understand how you can leverage available technology to identify what your customers want, and to respond to them faster than your competition. It also helps you assimilate new technology to streamline workflows to enhance your products and services. This includes technology that can be used to monitor productivity and enhance the performance of your team. Digitally fluent organizations also help their executives make data-driven decisions, while allowing their employees to do their work anytime and anywhere.
Basically, improving your digital fluency means improving your team’s Technology Quotient (TQ). Similar to Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ), TQ evaluates how you respond to new technology, your skills in using it, and how you use it to strategically improve your work and your collaboration with others in the workplace. Your TQ can also be affected by the available technologies when you were born, as in the case of digital natives who grew up in the age of digital technology which allowed them to readily assimilate a digital mindset and how to use new technological innovations in their everyday activities. To help improve you and your team’s digital fluency, you need to identify the overall objective of your team first. Technology is just a tool and is not the end-all-and-be-all of your team so do not use new technology for the sake of using it because such an approach will not be sustainable. Your objective as a team should guide you in choosing which new technology to adopt to help you achieve your overall goals.
One company I worked for used VR goggles for recruitment and asked applicants to use them while waiting for their turn to be interviewed. But the materials they viewed were just videos and did not even look three-dimensional. This company was just riding on the hype of VR and used it to attract applicants. In the end, they took it out because it only increased applicant volume at the start, but they could not sustain it. Eventually, it cost more because they had to constantly update the materials and assign one person to ensure it was used properly. So before using new technology, study how it will impact your existing manpower, process and tools.
After ascertaining your team’s overall objective, research available technology in the market so you can compare them and choose which one can be best used by your team. When I was asked to look at AR and VR tools available in the market, I discovered that creating content for AR and VR entails not just the course development software but other equipment like the VR goggles, cameras and other specialized tools. You need to research and benchmark with other organizations so you can avoid common mistakes and prepare adequately for when you decide to use the same technology.
To help your team appreciate and think of how they can use new technology, expose them to it by sending them to training and conferences on emerging technologies in your field so they know the possible tools and business processes that they can use to improve their work. When we were asked to study how to use AR and VR in training, some of my team members visited shops that offered an immersive VR experience, and they tried out for themselves to see how the technology worked. Their insights were valuable in helping us decide that the use cases for AR and VR at the time were still limited.
New inventions cannot be maximized if used willy-nilly or haphazardly. While there is a multitude of new technologies in the market, not everything is useful for your team. Your role as a people manager is to help your team improve their digital fluency so that when they are exposed to new technologies, they can properly discern which ones they can use to improve their work, and how they impact existing processes and tools.
Image credits: Simon Abrams on Unsplash