Key Highlights:
- Many companies had to quickly digitalize because of the pandemic and must continue to digitalize to keep up with employee expectations.
- The digitalization of work should be an ongoing process.
The advent of the pandemic forced companies to adopt to a digital work world in a short amount of time. Companies had to implement business solutions and train their employees and customers on new software.
While the pandemic has impacted how work is done for almost two years, the digital changes to business are here to stay. Further digitalization is on the horizon for most businesses if they want to remain competitive.
This article addresses the issues with digitalizing work and is based on the ACC 2021 Annual Meeting presentation, “Digitalizing Your Business for a Post-Covid World” by Brad Brochocki, Product Marketing Director, Conga, Teresa Waller, Senior Director, Contract Management, Cerner, Jennee DeVore, Head of Legal, Inflammatix.
Digital Operations
The digital transformation of legal operations such as contract management presents common issues that result from the pandemic’s impact on contract lifecycle. Common contracting issues from digitalization are:
- Loss of control if digital change is implemented too quickly;
- Lack of transparency if new digital procedures are not explained to employees;
- Inconsistent use of legal terminology in documents; and
- Inability to manage change.
The digital transformation of work is accelerating but still problematic to adopt. Many business leaders say digitalization is a company priority, but only a minority of companies have digitalized to scale. Prior to the pandemic, the usual reason companies tended not to buy into digitalization was because employees liked the status quo.
Change from the Past
Once the pandemic began impacting work, everyone moved to remote work, and companies had to change very quickly. The way work had been done was always face-to-face, but then companies had to change the ways in which employees collaborated.
The Great Resignation started in 2021, and has resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge as employees have left the workplace. Also, as employees have departed, they were no longer available to train new people.
Companies not only had to digitalize during the pandemic, they must continue to digitalize to keep up with the expectations of younger employees who live in a digital world.
Learn More:
Read “Virtual Work: Keeping Teams Engaged and Effective in the New Digital Workplace” by Stephanie Corey, Co-Founder, Up Level Ops, Aug. 2, 2021.
Read “Working From Home” by Kelly Xiao, Employment Counsel, SPJ Lead, VMWare, Kirsty Harvison, General Counsel, Quest, Theo Kapodistrias, Lawyer, University of Tasmania, and Niti Nadarajah, Senior Counsel, Philip Morris, The Australian Corporate Lawyer, Winter 2020, pp. 18-21.
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