A Skillsoft Companywww.vodeclic.com

White Paper

Wake up to the digital skills gap!How it is secretly costing your organization and its employees

Wake up to the digital skills gap! / © Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company/2

CONTENTS

A MATTER OF CONCERN… 3

LOST EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY 4

SIGNIFICANT HIDDEN COSTS TO BUSINESSES 5

HOW CAN WE EFFECTIVELY ADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES? 6

APPENDIX: REFERENCES 8

FOREWORD

This white paper is written for top-level managers of businesses and organizations, as well as for human resources and IT departments. It aims to raise awareness, in this time of ever-changing technology, of the importance of employees being proficient in the use of office, internet, and collaboration tools.

Drawing from its expertise and numerous benchmark studies on the subject, Vodeclic presents a well-founded perspective of how the lack and gaps in digital skills negatively impact employee productivity and translate into hidden costs that undermine profitability.

To conclude, Vodeclic recommends a few solutions that address these concerns.

© Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company / Wake up to the digital skills gap! / 3

A MATTER OF CONCERN…

"To be innovative and competitive in today's global digital economy, organizations have little choice but to invest in information and communication technologies. However, without the proper skills to put these technologies to effective use, firms are at significant risk of wasting their investments and missing key opportunities for growth and competitiveness." (IDC, empirica & INSEAD for the European Commission - e-Leadership: Skills for Competitiveness and Innovation - 2012)

The frantic pace of technological change is having a major impact on businesses of all sizes and from every sector. But most companies have yet to realize that their workers need now more than ever to adapt their digital skills to these rapid changes. And even if firms are aware of what's at stake, their approach to dealing with these new problems hasn't changed.

Meanwhile, the number of software programs, apps, and Internet services is exploding. Until only recently, employees used just 20 basic functions in the most representative software programs on the market, which was enough to demonstrate the ability to perform over a hundred different tasks. Today, they have more than 50 basic functions to learn across 50 software programs, apps, web services, and other devices, which amount to 2,500 basic skills to master.

Users overestimate their skills

According to a University of Twente report(5), people who have had IT training save an average of 35 minutes of productive time a day. Those who have not taken any kind of training, however, expect they would save only 15 minutes a day in productivity were they to do so. The report further revealed that 60% of respondents had not attended IT training because they felt they didn't need it!

Are we to infer from this that users are not "yet" convinced that they need to sharpen their digital skills? Not at all. 55% of respondents who had not received any IT training in the past three years acknowledged that they needed training to improve their skills, but simply had their doubts about the training methods currently available.

Only 53% of the labour force said they are confident that their level of computer and/or internet skills are sufficient. (1)

64% of university students in France fail the C2i certification in computer and internet literacy. (2)

Knowledge is doubling every year and skills now have a half-life of 2.5 years. (3)

1 in 10 adults in the US rate themselves as very proficient with the digital tools they use everyday at work. (4)

So many of the concepts that were merely talked about yesterday – Generation Y, Web 2.0, SaaS (Software as a Service), BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), the Cloud – are the realities we must all face today. And businesses are not exempt. Employees are at the very center of these changes, finding new ways to work and how to work faster, whenever and wherever they choose.

Wake up to the digital skills gap! / © Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company/4

LOST EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

Employees learn how to use computers most often from their colleagues!

The University of Twente report revealed that 38% of respondents rely on their colleagues to learn how to use their computer or solve IT problems.

Books and websites ranked second at 19%. For 15% of workers surveyed, their main source of knowledge is, or has been, a friend or family member. Another 15% cite the IT help desk, while only 5% use the "Help" feature.

The equivalent of one work day wasted each month for every employee!

According to the same report, an average of 7.6% of time spent by every employee each day is unproductive, which represents approximately 19 billion euros annually in terms of lost productivity for the Netherlands. The same story can be heard in the United States, where the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates this loss to be valued at $1.3 trillion(6).

Up to now, this problem seems to have been overlooked by both employees and employers. On average, the total amount of productive time lost due to the lack of digital skills is more than 16 minutes a day for every employee, of which: 35% due to inadequate computer skills, 28% due to inadequate internet skills, 16% due to problems using tablets and smartphones, and 21% as a result of helping colleagues.

The Twente report estimates this to mean that more than 5.45 hours of productivity time is lost by every employee each month – almost an entire work day!

A snapshot of a typical company not long ago was pretty straightforward: 1,000 employees, 1,000 workstations, 1,000 Windows licenses, 1,000 Office licenses. A fairly easy technology landscape to maintain.

Today, the same company is shifting towards a much more complex workplace: a multi-faceted IT environment, desktops and laptops, tablets and mobile phones, on-premises and cloud-based software. Not to mention globalization, which forces companies to become increasingly more global and encourage teams speaking several languages across several continents to work together.

It is becoming enormously difficult under these circumstances to manage the performance and productivity of teams affected by these technological and global economic changes.

Human resources and training managers are grappling with the problem of not being able to measure neither the amount of time wasted nor the costs associated with their employees' lack of digital skills.

Technology is evolving at a faster rate than organizations.

The consumerization of IT has a major impact on CIOs and HR professionals.

Face-to-face training is no longer suitable.

Insufficient training vs. new ways to work.

© Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company / Wake up to the digital skills gap! / 5

SIGNIFICANT HIDDEN COSTS TO BUSINESSES

As the BYOD trend is becoming more widespread, CIOs are forced to allow company employees to use their own personal devices. Perhaps one of the main reasons for the renewed digital skills gap – which businesses thought to have bridged in the past decade – is the consumerization of IT and the misalignment between the technologies available for personal use and companies' ability to update their computer equipment. And yet, the hidden costs of lost employee productivity are very real. Calculated per employee, the digital skills gap is secretly costing firms about €980 annually for every employee. (5)

According to McKinsey & Company, for a US-based company with a staff of 1,000 employees, this represents an annual loss of $10 million!

In today's world, businesses no longer decide when to upgrade their application portfolio

In conclusion, companies today have to surrender to the cloud and its paradigms (telecommuting, multiple devices, etc.). There was a time when they were the ones to determine when to upgrade their application portfolio. They would decide every five or six years when it was time to upgrade to a new version or update their operating system. And as the decision-maker, this meant they could even decide when to conduct specialized IT training and for whom.

Today, organizations have to put up with the frequency with which software companies release updates, which may be two, three, or even four times a year. They must also deal with the new ways their own employees like to work. They'll work in the office or at home, on their iPad or laptop, at 8 in the morning or in the middle of the night.

Under these circumstances, how can companies be sure that their employees have an excellent command of the programs, web services, or other apps they use on a daily basis?How do they give them the tools they need to stay productive while using their office applications?

The annual cost of IT help desk support for computer-related problems is estimated at €2,267 annually for every employee (7)

The University of Twente asked people who work at help desks to name the main reasons why users contact them for help. A surprising 60% of calls are directly related to the lack of user skills, while attributing 47% to having skills that are not adequate enough do their job.

Help desks are still the number one source for help with IT-related problems in firms. Every day, they receive many unnecessary calls that are directly due to inadequate computer skills. Their role is not to answer computer use-related questions. Yet more than 16% of the calls they receive deal with not knowing how to use applications such as Microsoft Office or Google Apps. It's not because users are having technical difficulties, but because they just don't have the right digital skills.

It is worth noting that help desk staff feel that users don't receive enough training. Of those respondents who work at help desks, 7% of them say that their company fails to provide adequate training.

Wake up to the digital skills gap! / © Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company/6

HOW CAN WE EFFECTIVELYADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES?

In these difficult economic times, it is even more critical for companies to do everything they can to maximize productivity. One way is to enhance their employees' digital skills!To stay competitive, the solution is for companies to wake up to the digital skills gap amidst their employees and proactively implement regular training to ensure their workers acquire the appropriate skills.

3. Involve the IT department

HR and training managers aren't the only ones affected by their employees' lack of digital skills. The help desk is too. It is therefore in the best interest of both departments to care about these issues and work together on a solution.

The CIO can reduce help desk costs by employing a training solution that will reduce the number of unnecessary calls on computer use-related questions. The help desk can then act as a tutor.

How effective and successful the training solution is depends largely on the involvement of the interested parties, from selecting and testing to deploying the solution.

2. Promote employee self-reliance

To convince workers that they have everything to gain from incorporating training into their everyday lives, companies can endorse a policy in which training is offered on an opt-in basis to give them a real sense of independence.

Training should allow workers to have the free-dom to educate themselves whenever and wherever they want. It's not so much a question of offering them training, even for a limited period of time, than it is to give them immediate answers to questions at any point in time while using a given application, without needing to ask a colleague for help or call the company's IT help desk.

The solution should also be very intuitive, so that employees don't need to be trained on how to use the solution itself.

1. Give everyone access to training

As cloud-based software and applications are evolving at a breakneck pace, the challenge that's sure to face us all is to keep our skills up-to-date ... or else be left behind. For this to be possible, companies can adopt a user-centric solution that is both mobile and flexible, giving users the ability to improve their digital skills when and where they need it, via an intranet or dedicated portal, on their iPad, mobile phone, or personal PC, in the office or at home.

The outdated, ad hoc training model, lasting 1 hour, 3 hours, 1 day or 2 days, is no longer relevant! In order to survive, firms must break away from traditional training, hindered by its obsolete methods of being based on units of time and place.

© Vodeclic, A Skillsoft Company / Wake up to the digital skills gap! / 7

4. Measure ROI and control costs

Yes of course, the user is king, but the HR/training and IT departments are ultimately those who choose to deploy a solution and make it available company-wide.

Their needs are different: the adopted solution must give them the ability to measure the ROI of training activities and take whatever steps are necessary to get more value from the money they've invested. It must also allow business teams to customize the solution according to the specific potential needs of each user.

The training solution adopted must therefore include powerful business analytics tools to track and assess the progress of employees' digital skills training.

5. Keep up with software updates

With the advent of the cloud, leading software publishers have dramatically increased the frequency of their updates. A flood of announcements are released every day: Microsoft announces that Windows 8.1 is here, or the release of the touchscreen version of Office 365; Google promotes the integration of Google+ with its Apps for Business; Adobe advertises its Creative Cloud suite. And just yesterday, Microsoft announced it has ended support for Windows XP!

Given the number of new versions and new products that hit the market every year and even every quarter, training in office applications has once again become an absolute must.

How do organizations handle the change? How do they make sure that their employees, whether or not they belong to "Generation Y", quickly and effectively familiarize themselves with these new working environments?

The answer is to proactively implement a future-proof training solution that is flexible, agile, and mobile.

6. Design the training solution around the technologies used

The BYOD trend adds fuel to the IT Consumerization fire. Users find that the tools they use in the workplace are out of step with standard programs they use every day at home. CIOs are forced to allow company employees to use their own personal devices.

Firms must therefore adopt and implement a one-size-fits-all training solution that works on any device (PC, Mac, tablet, mobile phone...) and is developed with a "responsive design" approach to enable viewing on any screen size or resolution.

Businesses and organizations will be unable to truly take advantage of technology changes and the different ways of working unless they realize what's at stake by enhancing employees' skills. Either they choose to not change anything, or they change their frame of mind and leverage one of the driving forces of productivity: their employees' digital skills!

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Vodeclic, a Skillsoft company, is a Cloud-based training solution provider for desktop software, web apps, and Cloud services.

With over 25,000 how-to videos in six languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese) we are proud to provide an online training solution designed to help users enhance their digital, internet and collaborative skills. The solution features exclusive courses and learning tools for all users, as well as business analytics and APIs for enterprise customers, from SMB to Fortune 500.

1. Digital Agenda for Europe Scoreboard 2012 - (page 95)

2. Ministry of National Education of France - 2010

3. Deloitte: Human Capital Trends 2014 survey: Top 10 findings

4. The Harris Poll: The Digital Skills Gap, Harris Interactive Inc. - May 2014

5. University of Twente: Ctrl Alt Delete – Lost productivity due to IT problems and inadequate computer skills in the workplace - January 2012

6. McKinsey Global Institute: The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies - July 2012

7. ECDL and Alba Graduate Business School: IT Skills: The Business Gain - 2010

APPENDIX: REFERENCES

36 rue Jules Verne, 92300 Levallois-Perret, FrancePhone: FR: 33 1 83 64 04 10 US: 1 866 757 3177Website : www.vodeclic.com

For more information or to learn more, visit www.vodeclic.com or call

US and Canada: 1 866 757 3177France: 33 1 83 64 04 10