December
12,
2025
Get the synergy you need from your tech and your people.
In most organizations, the tech stack is bigger than the skill stack. You’ve got collaboration suites, AI, automation tools, CRM platforms, data dashboards…and a workforce that’s still not quite sure how to get past the basics.
The result: expensive tools, underused features, and innovation that stalls in favor of business as usual.
Digital literacy shouldn’t be a daunting term. It isn’t about teaching everyone to code. It’s about helping people understand their tools well enough to do great work and imagine better ways of working.
A musician has a path to great performance. They learn the basics of their instrument. They practice for a long time. They get so fluent that they finally understand what the instrument can do – how it can be used to interpret a composition and convey meaning to the listener. That’s where the instrument is really valuable – in the hands of someone who really knows how to use it.
Your employees need a level of familiarity with their digital tools before they can truly perform.
When the tools get out of the way, the work gets better.
In a digitally literate organization, technology is a means to an end.
- People don’t think, “How do I format this?” They think, “What’s the clearest way to tell this story?”
- They don’t ask, “Where do I click to get the report?” They ask, “What decision are we trying to make?”
- Meetings aren’t spent troubleshooting; they’re spent problem-solving.
That only happens when people are confident and fluent in the tools they use every day. Until then, technology is friction. And friction kills performance.
Digital literacy is a prerequisite for innovation.
Leaders often say, “We want people to innovate. Our technology will help.” But until employees truly understand their tools, they won’t innovate beyond their function.
If I barely know how to use our collaboration platform, I’m not going to rethink how my team shares knowledge. If I don’t understand the basics of data visualization, I’m not going to propose a better way to share performance insights. I’ll stick to the old way, or just use the new tools to offer a shinier version of emails and spreadsheets.
Digital literacy unlocks three big shifts:
- From compliance to creativity. People stop doing it the way the system says to do it and start asking, “What else could this system do for us?”
- From local optimization to cross-functional innovation. Once employees truly know their tools, they can more easily see how a feature or workflow could help other teams, customers, or business lines—not just their own.
- From IT-pushed change to business-led innovation. When Business understands what’s possible, they stop waiting for IT to drop new features from above. Instead, they bring informed ideas to the table and co-create solutions.
Rethink the IT–Business relationship.
In many organizations, IT is seen as the feature factory and the help desk. Business leaders ask, “What’s coming in the next release?” or “Can you fix this?”
But the dynamic you actually want is:
- Business drives innovation based on strategy, customer needs, and frontline insight.
- IT meets those needs and brings synergy with new ideas and collaborative, informed solutions, often using tools you already have.
- Together, the Business and IT decide when new functionality or adjacent products are truly needed.
This is only possible when employees and business function leaders have enough digital literacy to have a real conversation with IT — not just present a list of complaints or requests, or blindly accept the next update or tool.
Build digital literacy that actually changes behavior.
Here are five practical ways organizations can raise digital literacy and improve collaboration between IT, employees, and business leaders.
Treat digital literacy as a core competency.
Digital skills shouldn’t live in optional training modules that people get to when they have time.
- Build digital fluency into role expectations, performance goals, and development plans.
- Include digital skills in leadership competencies. (“Can you lead a digitally enabled team?”).
- Recognize and reward employees who simplify processes or innovate using existing tools.
When digital literacy is part of “good performance,” people make time for it.
Start with real work, not generic training.
Most digital training fails because it’s tool-centric and abstract. They get a “feature tour” and forget what they saw by Monday. Instead:
- Design learning around real, role-based scenarios: “How do we streamline approvals?” “How do we share project status without email threads?”
- Have teams bring live work (reports, workflows, decks) into training and improve them in real time using the tools.
- Make “before and after” examples visible so people see the payoff.
If employees can immediately use what they’ve learned to make today’s work easier, it’s real. You build momentum and buy-in.
Turn power users into internal coaches
Every organization has those people who quietly figure things out and help others. Make that informal support system official and visible.
- Identify “digital champions” in each function or business unit.
- Give them extra training and early access to new features.
- Ask them to host short, targeted sessions (like, “15 minutes to cut your reporting time in half”) and serve as go-to resources on their teams.
This keeps support close to the work and it humanizes digital learning. People are more likely to ask a peer than open a ticket.
Bring IT into the business and the business into IT
To move from “IT vs. the business” to one team:
- Invite IT to observe workflows, attend team meetings, and hear pain points directly.
- Include business leaders in technology roadmaps so they can weigh in on priorities and use cases.
- Co-create design sessions or pilots where IT, end users, and business owners shape the solution together.
The goal: IT isn’t just deploying tools; they’re solving problems with the people who own and live those problems.
Implement digital literacy with change management
Digital literacy is not just training. It’s change.
- Make a clear case for change: Why does digital fluency matter to our strategy, customers, and employees’ day-to-day lives?
- Use the essentials of change management: active sponsors, consistent messaging, tailored stakeholder engagement, realistic role-based training, measurement, and sustained reinforcement.
After training, measure behavior, not just logins:
- Are people using features that reduce manual work?
- Are cycle times improving?
- Are teams experimenting and sharing what they learn?
When you deliberately manage the change, digital literacy starts becoming part of your culture, not a one-off initiative.
The payoff isn’t just capability and performance; it’s readiness.
High digital literacy does more than help people use today’s tools. It makes your organization ready for what’s next.
When a new feature, adjacent product, or platform comes along:
- Employees already have the confidence to explore and learn.
- Business leaders know how to ask, “How could this help us deliver our strategy?”
- IT is plugged into real needs and can respond with solutions, not just more layers.
In other words, you don’t just adopt new technology. You use it to create new value.
We have a major retail food products client who operates globally. In their Mexico operation, they switched from standard IT reports to self-service Power BI reports. The problem: their existing reports didn’t reflect what the organization really needed. As a result, employees spent over 120 hours each month upgrading those reports — cleaning, reformatting, and calculating new indicators that were actually useful.
But as soon as these digitally savvy employees had access to the data in their new tool, Power BI, they created new reports and calculations directly in that tool. They suddenly had the views, formats, and indicators they needed. They saved that wasted time and instead spent it on creating new reports and views, as needed. The synergy between the powerful tool and digitally literate employees saved useless effort, reduced response time to leadership, and lowered complaints and requests to IT.
That’s the difference digital literacy makes. It’s not about mastering every system. It’s about giving people the confidence and fluency to focus on what actually matters: the work, the customer, and the future you’re trying to create.
