Digital maturity matters to win talent

Nine in ten British workers now weigh workplace tech offerings among their top three priorities when looking for a new role, ranking them only behind a reasonable salary and a good manager. For an increasingly hybrid workforce, advanced technology infrastructure has become instrumental in enabling people to collaborate efficiently with teams and perform their roles. When it falls short, the impact is immediate on both employee experience, retention and productivity.

 

In the past decade, UK organisations have invested heavily in digital transformation, expanding technology budgets and deploying new digital infrastructure across most business functions. Yet the gap between what has been invested and what is actually delivering business value remains wide.

 

Research on the gap between digital adoption and digital maturity reveals the scale of the problem: fewer than 46% of organisations provide good digital communication for remote employees. Only 52% can carry out critical operations remotely and securely. One in five acknowledge that their collaboration capabilities need significant improvement, and 61% admit their digital experience is not yet mature.

 

The upshot is that organisations have deployed technology, but they have not ensured it supports the way hybrid and distributed teams need to work. Roughly 40% of the UK workforce now operates remotely or in hybrid arrangements. Many of these employees working remotely are frequently limited in what they can do and see, remaining absent from the information flows and collaborative processes that shape how work gets done. For organisations competing for talent in the UK, these shortcomings highlight that the employer has not genuinely invested in supporting hybrid work and pose a direct competitive disadvantage.

 

 

The scale of the implementation gap

Fragmented communication tools are some of the most consistent barriers across workplaces. Data on digital maturity from organisations operating across sectors in the UK shows that half of British businesses still rely on partially manual or paper-based processes, meaning that despite technology investment, many workflows that can only occur in person become operational bottlenecks where hybrid employees cannot participate equally. Organisations that have not digitised all their processes are effectively telling remote workers they are not fully supported, creating a competitive disadvantage at the outset when recruiting.

 

Further, 30% of businesses struggle with poor platform integration. The fallout reflects in informal workarounds that work in offices – gathering around a desk to solve a problem, checking in physically. When teams operate across multiple disconnected systems, employees working from home are disproportionately disadvantaged. Despite significant investment in tech capabilities, most organisations have yet to ensure device-agnostic platforms that deliver a consistent experience regardless of where an employee is logged in.

 

 

The data and security bottleneck

Only 29% of organisations use data for high-level decision-making, despite significant investment in data infrastructure. Further, 56% of less advanced organisations report a lack of cybersecurity awareness – with the practical consequence that remote access is restricted rather than enabled, limiting what those employees can contribute.

 

For distributed organisations, the consequence is that employees often lack access to the insights that shape business direction and strategy. Office-based staff have visibility into critical data and insights that inform decision-making, while remote workers lack that same access. For a high-achieving candidate evaluating whether to work remotely for an organisation, this asymmetry indicates that their participation will not be supported equally.

 

 

The evolving workforce challenge

As the nature of work changes – with businesses increasingly operating across full-time employees, part-time staff, freelancers and external partners – the quality of digital infrastructure affects not only individual productivity but also an organisation’s ability to orchestrate workflows effectively across its entire ecosystem.

 

Only about half (52%) of UK organisations can carry out critical operations remotely and securely. For any organisation relying on distributed working arrangements, this represents both a capability gap and a talent access problem. With 73% of UK employers already struggling to find skilled talent, organisations that cannot promise secure, seamless remote working are actively shrinking their own talent pool.

 

They are losing candidates to competitors that have invested in mature digital infrastructure – experienced contractors, skilled part-time workers, caregivers managing other commitments, talented people who depend on flexibility.

 

 

Critical areas where maturity matters

Evidence across organisations points to five areas where maturity gaps tend to be most pronounced: workplace collaboration, process automation, data and digital experience, cloud infrastructure and cyber-security.

 

To create competitive advantage, organisations need to treat these five areas as an interconnected ecosystem. An organisation investing in process automation without mature data capabilities ends up automating inefficient workflows. Upgrading cloud infrastructure without addressing cyber-security creates vulnerabilities that necessitate restrictive access policies. The ask then is to audit digital infrastructure for an uninterrupted employee experience, with checkpoints across each of these critical dimensions, enabling complete and robust support to skilled talent looking to contribute virtually.

 

 

The competitive imperative

A majority of UK organisations acknowledge their digital experience is not yet mature, yet many will have invested significantly in digital transformation to reach even that point. For businesses competing for talent in a market where British workers are prioritising workplace tech offerings (89%) nearly as high as salary (92%) when looking for a new role, digital maturity has become a recruitment and retention imperative.

 

To close the digital maturity gap, organisations need to measure not just what has been deployed, but also how comprehensively it supports their distributed workforce. Building regular assessment into digital strategy – one that specifically captures the perspective of hybrid and remote workers, freelancers and part-time staff – will foster actual progress in ways of working and deliver returns on tech spend.

 

Addressing these limitations will enable organisations operating in the UK to build digital environments that keep pace with how work actually happens. When executed systematically, digital maturity becomes a tangible competitive advantage – allowing employers to attract talent more effectively, retain the people they have, and access the full breadth of the labour market. 

 

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Lena Russell is HR Director at Ricoh UK & Ireland

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and Urupong