Regardless of your industry, product, or workflow, the transition to our new, digital world has changed the way business is done. This is true not only in how companies create and sell their products and interact with customers, but also in their internal office workings. It has created streamlined efficiencies that other generations could never have even dreamed of! However, far too many businesses don’t take advantage of the opportunity it provides. Here are some key steps to build a digital culture in your company.

Offer Continued Training to Everyone

No surprise here: it starts with training. The two main takeaways, however, are these: First, offer or require training to everyone, from custodial staff to upper management. Make sure every single team member can (at the very least) access emails, properly login to proprietary software, and participate in inter-office communication. The second digital culture training takeaway is that training must be ongoing, with opportunities for everyone to keep learning and growing.

Transparently Embrace Digital Tools to Communicate

A digital culture starts from the top down. As with most things, employees tend to emulate their leaders. If you want your organization to move away from post-it notes to electronic communication, start by saying you (as a manager) think it’s important to move in that direction, and that you will learn with them, and learn from early mistakes along the way.

Demonstrate and Encourage Digital Collaboration Tools

Sometimes learning new digital platforms on your own can be challenging and frustrating. It’s critical to train with a group, but why not take that opportunity to get that group to learn digital collaborative tools? Applications like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Drive are designed to help departments collaborate and edit projects and communications remotely through cloud-based storage and networking.

Experiment!

The digital landscape is constantly evolving and changing. Your digital culture needs to evolve as well. As new platforms and applications become available, test them out to see if they’re right for your organization. A great way to do this is to assign a small task force to pilot it and report back. If they love it, roll it out to more employees. If they hate it, move on.

Set Measurable Digital Goals

Finally, set and communicate clear goals you want you to want to achieve with your internal and external efforts. If you want to be paperless within a year, for example, challenge and inspire your staff to make it happen. If you want to monetize your website, attach a revenue goal to it, and go.

Digital technology has revolutionized our world. Utilize it to take your business to the next level!