Published on the 28/03/2019 | Written by Heather Wright

Call goes out for companies to look at DX beyond their own business…

New Zealand and Australian companies have been challenged to think beyond their own businesses when it comes to digital transformation and become an active part of bridging the skills gap.

Leigh Smyth, Lloyds Banking Group responsible transformation director, wants Kiwi and Australian businesses to prosper – but she also wants those businesses to ‘do well, by doing good’.

At the recent DX 2019 Summit in Auckland, Smyth issued a challenge for attendees, calling on them to think about ‘NZ Inc’ as part of their own business digital transformation.

“If you think about it and do it right from the start, you can really increase productivity in your country and help your country prosper, while making sure you are leading the way in transformation and doing it responsibly,” Smyth says.

“Digital is the key enabler of our century,” she says, citing UK stats showing people are dying more now from loneliness than from smoking. “So digital can keep people alive.

“Young people with access to ICT get a two-grade improvement, which means they can go on better education.

“For people with disability, tech is a game changer.

“It is really important for people and society. We know people with digital skills are able to save around £500 a year and that’s low-income families. And businesses thrive when they have those skills: They save more, they earn more, they reduce their costs, increase their productivity – and we’ve got the stats to prove it.”

“If you think about it and do it right from the start, you can really increase productivity and help your country prosper.”

Some of those stats come from an annual survey Lloyds runs covering a million consumers – and from what it can see of its own customers’ online behaviours. Among the stats: That SMEs in the UK could unlock £84.5 billion through improved digital skills if businesses without digital skills were able to upskill to the same levels and digital savvy companies with the same profiles.

Smyth says for Lloyds, which began its digital transformation back in 2014 and last year embarked on the £3 billion third phase of that transformation, the biggest difference it can make is through its people, who have daily contact with communities.

The company, which has 75,000 staff, set an ambitious target of having 20,000 ‘digital champions’ by 2017. It now has 25,000 of the champions. Each champion pledges to increase the digital skills of at least two individuals, businesses or charities a year, supporting a number of different digital campaigns through partnerships and local initiatives.

“Most people who don’t have digital skills are simply not interested in getting them,” warns Smyth. “So the person who can unlock their interest has to know them and have a conversation with them. It can’t be fixed by a campaign, it has to be a conversation.

“We’ve got people in our banks talking to customers not about internet banking, but asking what their hobbies are – because when they talk about their hobby we can say ‘have you tried this app?’. That’s how you get the conversation going because you have to light someone’s interest.”

“And it’s been like a trojan horse, because to be a digital champion, they had to learn digital skills.”

The bank has now developed a Digital Champions Framework to guide other organisations in setting up similar programmes.

Smyth urged local companies to work together to create the world’s biggest network of digital champions – and knock Lloyds from that top position.

Lloyds push to bridge the skills gap – something Smyth is open in acknowledging is self-serving to some degree: “If the country doesn’t prosper the bank fails” – has also extended to upskilling its own staff, launching new inclusion initiatives, and changing job ad wording to encourage more diversity.

The bank has also been working on a template for what ‘digital expertise’ and digital skills are so there can be a universal measure for skills.

“The World Economic Forum have now said they want it on a global scale, that’s why we’ve been talking to banks over here to see how we can work to help New Zealand and Australia.

“We spent nine months doing that consultation so we might as well share it and make everything transparent and make the world a better place.”