Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Busara Africa, Taaka Awori, has encouraged business owners to put the equipping of their employees at the center of day-to-day operations in the face of the emerging digital economy.
She was speaking on the topic: ‘Making your business digital ready: Re-orienting and reskilling the workforce‘ on the first day [Tuesday, June 1] of the 2021 Citi Business Festival by Citi FM/Citi TV.
“You must manage human capital as wisely as financial capital. It’s so critical to put human capital at the centre of that business”, she noted.
For her, a strategic rather than an operational approach to digitally re-scale the workforce is one of the surest pivots by which businesses can transform for effective and efficient management and meet competition.
“It is becoming evident that for businesses, it is imperative for reorienting and re-skilling the workforce”, the leadership coach said.
Taaka Awori’s four organizational steps to make employees digitally-ready
- Developing a strategy for digital transformation: This strategy must have a clear goal you are seeking to achieve or an opportunity you are seeking to leverage or a problem you are seeking to solve. The digital strategy should consider your organizational culture to succeed. It needs to look at customer experience, leadership, operational efficiencies.
- Embedding the strategy into a proper process of effective change management: To ensure that this is sustainable, one needs to strictly apply the key principles of effective change management. Some principles include leadership-buying, employers making a case for change, and share the benefits of digital transformation because people panic and may resist change. Businesses must also adopt a culture of digital curiosity to build digital champions among staff.
- Conducting strategic workforce plan: Organizations must first identify skills needed to achieve the goals of the digital strategy.
- Re-skilling and Reorienting: It can be done by bringing in new talents; but with existing staff members, it includes training. In our new normal, face-to-face or instructor-led learning may no longer be possible, so increase the use of virtual learning programs.
Itinerary for 2021 Citi Business Festival
Week 1: Digital Economy – Building a cashless society and the opportunities for business and job creation.
Week 2: Doing business in Ghana.
Week 3: AgriBusiness – Feeding Ghana with a sound import substitution strategy.
Week 4: Trade – AfCFTA: Opportunities for investment & Job creation in Ghana.
Week 5: Oil and Gas – The opportunities for indigenous businesses.
There will also be virtual business fora live on Citi TV every Tuesday from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm The radio on-air series is themed to correspond with the various virtual forums at 9:00am every weekday.
The first week of the virtual forum today, Tuesday, June 1, on Citi TV, is on the theme, ‘Digital Economy – Building a cashless society and the opportunities for business and job creation.’
Citi TV’s Dziffa Akua Ametam will host this conversation with four panelists from Absa Bank, IT Consortium, the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems, and the Bank of Ghana among others who will join in via zoom.
The Citi Business Festival is sponsored by Absa Bank with support from IT Consortium.
It is also powered by Citi FM, Citi TV, and Ghana’s most comprehensive business news website, www.citibusinessnews.com.