In parallel with its "Industry of the Future" strategy, Wallonia Region, following exchanges with the European project partners, both in bilateral meetings and in peer review sessions, decided to have a deeper look at the issues relating to the consideration of human and organisational aspects in the digital transformation plans of companies.
Within this context, the study "Analysis of the human dimension in 4.0" was implemented and a questionnaire was sent to 634 consultants approved for the Walloon company voucher scheme for "growth" and/or "digital" themes. These consultants were selected as they carry out missions to diagnose the needs of companies and propose an action plan to integrate the Industry 4.0 dimension. The survey was open for 2 months.
In addition, the objective was also to survey the consultants on the following questions:
- Should the digital transformation of companies integrate the development of workers' skills? How do consultants position themselves in relation to this issue?
- What are their needs to further develop the human dimension in the digital transformation of companies?
- Has covid had an impact on the content of their missions?
For the analysis of the results, conclusions showed two main trends :
- The human and organisational capital essential to the success of the digital transformation of companies is still under-invested today
- The consultants surveyed consider it more than necessary to integrate the human and organisational dimensions to succeed in the digital transformation of a company
In addition to these views, conclusions of the SPW "Employment-Training" survey also show that the responding consultants:
- are aware of the importance of the human dimension but that few of them integrate the human dimension into their mission as it is;
- declare that they do not have sufficient expertise to support the development of the human dimension in the digital transformation plans of companies
- declare that they want to broaden their horizons and come into contact with players more specialised in the human and organisational dimensions
The recommendations aimed at making consultants more aware of the human challenges, strengthening the complementary links between the technological and human dimensions, and promoting the rapprochement between "soft skills" and "hard skills" therefore make perfect sense. These recommendations will be used by Wallonia to complete its action plan.
The English version of the Survey is made available here.
