The Employee Experience of Digital Business Transformation

MIT CISR

Stephanie Woerner reads MIT CISR's January 2020 research briefing, which was authored by Nick van der Meulen and Kristine Dery. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2020_0101_PathwaysEX_MeulenDery. Abstract: MIT CISR research has shown that senior leaders expect that digital transformation efforts will significantly affect 67 percent of employees. After all, it’s employees who have to adopt new systems, data, processes, and habits to deliver on the transformation. This briefing outlines just how employees are affected, by describing the employee experience along four distinct transformation pathways. We found that employees suffer from increased work complexity when companies follow pathways that prioritize developing customer-oriented capabilities over operational capabilities. Companies can improve their employee experience by first developing a foundation of required operational capabilities, or by doing so in small iterations by alternating with corresponding customer-oriented capabilities.