5 Digital Competencies That Will Influence Your Career in the New Digital World

The future is digital: The development of technology has affected every aspect of our lives, especially in the last 20 years. Everything we touch and use keeps changing its form to be more suitable, practical, functional and all around better, and well before anyone else gets around to making a better model. Especially after the pandemic, our lives became increasingly more digital and professional life has faced the biggest challenge. As remote work became more commonplace, digital skills became more important than ever. As the number of people who are working remotely increases, digital knowledge is more and more vital, but almost half of the employees lack the necessary digital skills. (1-2) Technology is improving, changing, adapting fast and automation keeps creating and destroying jobs. The job description and the title you have may turn into something different and require digital skills you do not currently have or the job itself may become completely unnecessary. As the professional world creates specific positions with special qualifications and roles shift between sectors to fit into the digital world, you need to keep improving your digital knowledge and skills. (3)

Having the Motivation to Use Technology

The first digital competency is being motivated to use technology. Without motivation to improve oneself, no achievement is possible. Raising awareness of the need to improve digital skills is essential. Employees and employers may feel insufficient about their skills, have a hard time understanding that to this point, their skills were enough and functioning and today, they need to face the fact that they need to keep improving their digital knowledge, maintain and develop their skills. Besides experienced people in work life, even young people are insecure about their digital skills. Learning and Work Institute presents data about digital skills and the labor market in the UK and an interesting finding is, only 1 among 5 young people are confident in their digital knowledge. (5) Companies should understand the importance of keeping up with changes in the digital world, focus on raising awareness, motivate and train employees within their corporate culture. Caring about employees’ development will help employee engagement and success. (6)

Always learning and learning strategies

Another key digital competency you need to have to improve your digital skills is, understanding that learning is a lifelong process and it never stops. The digital world demands adaptation to rapid changes and skill requirements. In order to survive and stay in the global market with its harsh competition, companies and employers adapt to the changes and require their employees to do the same. It is essential to keep curiosity alive and to remain in touch with professional life, being curious about what people in similar positions do, what digital knowledge they have and how they are trained and developed. Sometimes employees train themselves on digital world and sometimes companies do trainings, workshops, etc. and create a learning environment plays a key role. (4)

Analytical Thinking and Innovation

World Economic Forum’s list of important future skills presents analytical thinking as the first. Analytical thinking is basically having the ability to solve problems effectively and innovation skills are the ability to produce new and developed strategies, competencies, and processes. Working with people who can grasp the problem and coming up with fast and effective solutions is more important than ever. Digital transformation creates problems and demands new solutions and to adapt to these changes; observing, brainstorming, interpreting data, integrating new information and constantly improving digital skills and knowledge, analytical thinking and innovation skills are vital. Being observant about your working environment, learning how things work, playing brain games, thinking about your decisions helps improve your analytical thinking skills, while experiencing new things, taking risks, and keeping your curiosity alive is helpful for improving innovation skills. (8).

Critical Thinking and Analysis

Everyone thinks, all people have their way of thinking but people’s ways of thinking are often biased, distorted, cannot comprehend the entire situation because thinking is often shaped by individual experiences and focuses on individual perspectives. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is built on overcoming egocentrism and sociocentrism, in other words, thinking outside the box. Critical thinking is about being reflective, analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing oneself, monitoring, understanding the need to change and improving knowledge and skills. The capability to constantly monitor and criticize oneself while grazing out of egocentrism, improves effective communication and problem-solving abilities. In the digital world, where everything keeps changing rapidly, the ability to think critically is crucial. Coming up with vital questions, collecting relevant information, concluding well-reasoned solutions and formulating entire processes in logical structures while interpreting one’s position and the relation with the people one works with is vital for development (7).

Creativity

Employers’ and companies’ requirement for creativity in jobs is increasing day by day. In professional life, people are increasingly interested in graphic design, image editing and so on, which are the most popular creative skills. Digital skills also allow a person to express themselves and show unique colors. Original content creation, e-commerce, network and information security, UX/UI design, digital marketing, social media marketing, and data analytics are the most popular areas in digital creativity, even making interactive presentations counts. Using digital tools and technologies to explore creative ideas, taking up new perspectives to comprehend situations and to present oneself, digital creativity is crucial. The future will be built on creativity and technology, and digital creativity is becoming more and more important. (9-10) The digital revolution changed the world and digital competencies are now vital for both companies and employees. In this article, key aspects of digital competencies and their importance in the new digital world are interpreted. Having a tendency and motivation to use technology, having continuous learning and learning strategies, analytical thinking and innovation, critical thinking and analysis and finally, creativity are presented and elaborated with regard to their importance, how they can be improved and their benefits. Ayşenur Düzgün References: 1. https://www.lloydsbank.com/assets/media/pdfs/banking_with_us/whats-happening/211109-lloyds-consumer-digital-index-2020-eds.pdf 2. https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/digital-skills-for-the-workplace/ 3. https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/innovation/articles/competencies-in-the-digital-age.html 4. https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/innovation/articles/competencies-in-the-digital-age.html 5. https://www.worldskillsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Disconnected-Report-final.pdf 6. https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/innovation/articles/competencies-in-the-digital-age.html 7. https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/our-conception-of-critical-thinking/411 8. https://enkhtuul092811.medium.com/what-are-analytical-thinking-and-innovation-skills-how-to-improve-690c3371b909 9. https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/digital-creativity 10. https://b2wgroup.com/5-reasons-creative-skills-are-important-in-todays-digital-world/