Digitalisation – Powered by People

AREN'T SMARTPHONES amazing? Not only can you make calls, but you can also track your steps, check the weather, share cute animal pictures. Yes, smartphones are incredible! So, why did it take me two years to persuade my mum to switch from her old mobile phone to a new smartphone?

This illustrates a common problem. New digital technology can be fantastic, offering significant improvements, yet we often resist it. The challenge is that benefits of digital technology can only be realised if someone – a person – decides to engage with it.

The Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation (PLD)

In 2017, The Made Smarter Review highlighted that although there were significant economic, societal, and environmental benefits to adopting digital technologies in the manufacturing sector, the UK was lagging behind its competitors. The review aimed to identify why.

The review found numerous barriers to the adoption of digital technologies, including the UK tax system, lack of technical support, and system incompatibilities. It also identified that people and organisational culture are major barriers to uptake. Based on this review, the government funded an “ecosystem” of initiatives aimed at removing these barriers, called the Made Smarter Innovation programme.

As part of this funding, money was allocated to five university-led research centres. Four of the five centres are technology-led. The PLD reverses this approach. Appreciating the critical role people play in adopting digital technology, it prioritises the human ahead of technology.

People-Led Digitalisation: Aims to improve the outcome of the adoption of digital technologies through prior explicit consideration and planned appropriate action ​that prioritises human needs and working patterns in the design and implementation of digitalised work systems.

Our Aim

A key requirement of the Made Smarter Innovation programme is to create impact. Within the PLD, we achieve this by conducting research underpinned by academic rigour and translating the outcomes into practical insights and tools for the industry.

Here are a few of our tools:

- Glossary of Terms

Do you know the difference between digitise, digitalise, and digital transformation? One fundamental requirement of a successful digitalisation initiative is clear communication. Miscommunication can be detrimental to the project. To help industry, we created a glossary of terms that can be downloaded and adapted for organisational use.

- Metrics of Success Tool

A literature review within the PLD identified over 90 different metrics to measure the success of a digitalisation project. The challenge for industry is deciding which metrics to use and their importance. For instance, is employee satisfaction more or less important than efficiency increases?

We created a tool using analytical hierarchical processing (pairwise comparison) to help organisations prioritise and weight success metrics. This tool provides a rigorous method to identify relevant metrics and compare results across departments or sectors.

- Legitimacy Cards

How do organisations decide which digital technology to adopt and how it might be accepted by the workforce? Based on the theory of ‘legitimacy,’ we created a set of cards to explore these questions. The cards are used in group settings to discuss how people feel about the technology through different lenses, such as organisational benefits, personal impact, and moral acceptance. These structured conversations help organisations make more informed decisions about technology adoption.

Industry Collaboration: Working with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)

Central to the success of our Centre is our collaboration with industry partners to co-create research and validate our research outputs. The NDA has been a strong advocate for our work.

The NDA recognises the immense economic, environmental, and societal benefits that digital technologies can deliver. However, as it operates in a heavily regulated sector which requires a low tolerance of risk, adopting these technologies poses significant challenges.  The PLD has collaborated with the NDA on several projects aimed at facilitating their adoption of digital technologies.

One of our joint projects focused on identifying the enablers for successful digitalisation within highly regulated sectors. This research was compiled into a technical report, which serves as a guide for the NDA and its operating companies on how to embark on their digitalisation journey.

“By pinning down the barriers and most importantly the enablers of digital technology adoption, we know what we should be ready for as we embark on further digitalisation projects. For complex sites like ours, this is fundamental.”  Cezara-Lidia Jalba, CE&I Design Engineer, Sellafield Ltd. 

The most significant project we have collaborated with them on was to understand the evolving requirement for digital skills within energy jobs.  This three-way collaboration between the PLD, NDA, and Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) aimed to determine if increasing digitalisation of the energy sector was altering the skills they were recruiting for. 

The research revealed that jobs within the energy sector are indeed becoming more digital.  More than this they were able to identify that the skills being requested were not basic skills – which has been the focus of much of the government initiatives – but intermediate and advanced skills.

“The work in collaboration with the PLD and OEUK has proven to be an invaluable resource that we will use to inform both our strategic workforce planning along with underpinning the requirements for intermediate level skills development across the industry.”  Dave Clark, Asset Management and Continuous Improvement Manager, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Get Involved

By putting people at the core of decisions around digitalisation the PLD aims to advance digital technology adoption and in doing so realise the substantial value that these new technologies can bring. Through our dedicated webpage anyone is able to download the tools, insights and case studies we have developed within the Centre free of charge.

If you are interested in our work and would like to be more involved, we are actively seeking to partner with organisations to help us test and disseminate our tools. For more information or to explore collaboration opportunities, visit the webpage below or contact us at [email protected].

Dr Susan Lattanzio is the Research and Industry Engagement Manager for the Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation (Deputy Director)

www.p-ld.co.uk