Human capital leveraging digital transformation

Digitalisation is more than a technological change that companies are undergoing. It brings a paradigm shift in the way organizations manage and create value from information, and involves profound changes in processes.  As such, understanding the way people organise and act, in the labour market and within each company, is essential for assessing the effects of digitisation. There’s a true revolution going on in the mind set of professionals, as an adaptation required to address new corporate scenarios unimaginable until now. The qualification for these changes, and for the new roles in the labour market, and in organizations, call for training/ qualification and development of specific skills.

The debate about the investment in human capital and the development of skills highlights the speed of change and innovation, technological convergence and the co-responsibility of pub- lic and private actors in creating and/or attracting the talent needed to compete to meet the challenges of the digital world and that allow them to take full advantage of all its advantages and minimise its disadvantages. The contribution of Aveiro Labour Observatory is key here.

Aveiro Labour Observatory, while collecting and analysing information on competence and qualification/training needs in Aveiro, also supports the development of training aligned with the identified needs. Moreover, it develops knowledge about the local labour market and the impacts from digital transformation for the territory. According to the companies in the region already ad- dressed by the Labour Observatory through workshops, interviews and questionnaires, digital competences are pointed out as necessary across all areas/ departments and functions of the company, being transversal to the companies.

Companies highlighted that transversal competences (e.g. soft skills, which are mental, emotional or which are not associated with technical areas, yet necessary for the implementation and digital transformation) are equally, or more important, than technical competences (also called hard skills, i.e. directly associated with the operationalization of the technologies). According to the opinion of most of the representatives of the companies surveyed, the training in technical competences offered in the region of Aveiro is of great quality. However, the current training in transversal competences, is found to be more incipient and in need of, inevitably, being reinforced as they are pointed out as critical for the performance of professionals in digital transformation.

The investment in training for technical and transversal competences for digitization highlighted as growing, and in a very significant way, according to the companies surveyed. Since training in digital competences is a necessity transversal to all areas/departments and functions, the development of training plans should also be transversal and therefore directed to all employee profiles.