Technology

Daily Buzz: Help Employees Embrace New Technology

Leaders can eliminate barriers to tech adoption with a culture that supports employees. Also: transitioning to a virtual sponsorship program.

A digital transformation across an organization can be a slow, difficult process. Barriers such as employee skills, lack of senior-management awareness, cost, and inadequate infrastructure often stand in the way of seamless tech adoption.

To combat this, leaders must create a culture that drives more effective tech adoption, write Frank-Jürgen Richter and Gunjan Sinha in Harvard Business Review.

“Building such a culture requires different types of approaches across industries, but a time-tested strategy is to incentivize technology use,” Richter and Sinha say. Companies can create incentives with gamification apps like Kahoot that make tech training and onboarding more engaging.

Organizations must also focus on their infrastructure. Employee buy-in is important, but your tech also has to be simple and easy to work with for end users.

“Another requisite for creating a culture of technology adoption lies in making the infrastructure around it—including IT networks and systems, software, processes, and practices—supportive and user-friendly,” Richter and Sinha say.

In addition, reskilling and learning should be part of the tech adoption plan. Employees probably won’t respond well to the expectation that they work with new tools without getting used to them first. The plan must also go beyond short-term solutions.

“A piecemeal approach to tech adoption and implementation may feel like short-term progress but will not lead to the creation of a digitally focused mindset, and it will not result in a clean departure from legacy systems or attitudes,” Richter and Sinha say.

Building Your Virtual Sponsorship Program

With the transition to virtual events, have event sponsorships disappeared? Though associations have had to shift their strategies, sponsorship opportunities are still available.

“Data is one of the major benefits of virtual event sponsorship programs that can be delivered to sponsors in larger numbers,” says JP Moery on The Moery Company’s blog. “The data is better than what they have received in the past walking around or meeting people at a reception.”

Other Links of Note

Sometimes board members can get stuck in a rut. Help them by allowing them to play different roles, says Smooth the Path’s Amanda Kaiser.

The event industry’s recovery timeline is changing, says Julius Solaris on the Event Manager Blog. He breaks down the latest developments.

Quality blog content is more vital to the success of your nonprofit’s digital campaigns than it has ever been, says a recent post from Nonprofit Tech for Good.

(Rowan Jordan/E+/Getty Images Plus)

Michael Hickey

By Michael Hickey

Michael Hickey is a contributor to Associations Now. MORE

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