Digital Lifescapes

Talent development was a reoccurring topic at the WEF 2020 event in Davos this week. In related news, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) full-time employment (FTE) will reach 55.3 million worldwide in 2020 -- that's an increase of 3.9 percent over 2019, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Moreover, the global ICT FTE workforce will maintain this pace of growth over the 2019-2023 forecast period, reaching more than 62 million people in 2023, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.8 percent. ICT Talent and Emerging Staffing Trends IDC believes a person can, as part of an occupation, perform several roles and split their time across those roles. The combination of roles for an occupation may vary over time between industries and organizations, even though the activities performed by a role remain relatively stable. Within ICT job roles, activities are performed within projects, programs, and lines of busi...

Do you wonder, are there significant benefits for building a culture of digital trust? New research has uncovered a direct connection between the cause and effect of bad actors in organizations across the globe. Information technology has many uses, but business leaders must be mindful of compliance. Twenty-nine percent of employees observed at least one compliance violation at work in 2016 or 2017, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. The survey, which sampled more than 5,000 employees at all levels, found that these workers are twice as likely to leave their organization. Fifty-nine percent of the sampled employees who observed a compliance violation were actively looking for a new job, compared with 29 percent who did not witness bad behavior. The Business Case for Compliance "While attrition is not an obvious area of concern for compliance executives, it should be," said Brian Lee, compliance practice leader at Gartner . "Employee miscon...

As more progressive business leaders choose to support mobile, team-oriented and non-routine ways of working, an increasing number of them are looking for assistance in adopting digital workplace technology. But why are they searching for actionable information and qualified guidance? According to the findings from the latest Gartner survey, only 7 to 18 percent of organizations possess the 'digital dexterity' to adopt New Ways of Work (NWOW) solutions -- such as virtual collaboration and a mobile workplace. Furthermore, it's already apparent that forcing employees to accept rigid and inflexible workplace mandates are a recipe for poor performance. Ongoing Change Reshapes the Workforce According to the Gartner assessment, an organization with high digital dexterity has employees who have the cognitive ability and social practice to leverage and manipulate media, information and technology in unique and highly innovative ways. By country, organizations exhibiting the...

While there's less commentary about the challenges of "Shadow IT" projects within the enterprise market, the underlying issues that created this phenomena are still very apparent in the workplace. Bypassing the legacy IT organization is a common practice. It's now somewhat expected. As many IT workers develop greater technology skills and apply them to advance their careers, savvy digital workers in non-IT departments believe their CIO is out of touch with their technology needs. Less than 50 percent of workers (both IT and non-IT) believe their CIOs are aware of digital technology problems that affect them, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. The Gartner survey further revealed that European workers said that their CIO is more aware of technical challenges (58 percent) than U.S. workers believe they are (41 percent). Clearly, it's a big problem. Ongoing Indifference to Legacy IT "Non-IT workers aren't likely to use the IT h...

More CIOs now accept that their most progressive Line of Business leaders are not a threat to their authority, they're merely driven to find the best-fit solutions to their business technology requirements. By 2018, 50 percent of traditional IT organizations will evolve to support assets and services outside their internal service portfolio, according to the latest market study by Gartner, Inc. In particular, Personal Cloud services are growing in importance, as more employees take control of their digital lives. Meanwhile, IT managers responsible for building the 'digital workplace' will be increasingly challenged, as the personal cloud phenomenon continues to evolve and intersect with official IT-sanctioned initiatives. "The personal cloud is the collection of content, services and tools that users assemble to fulfill their personal digital lifestyle needs across any device. Each user's personal cloud is unique and evolving, as the user's daily needs chan...