What is a Digital Worker?

In the future, work as we know it will be vastly different (if predictions hold true). Automation will replace humans in many roles, and more demand will be placed on higher-order cognitive, social, and emotional skills. “Busy work” will cease to exist, freeing our time for more creative and strategic endeavors. Companies will completely re-envision their structure and processes to support the new way we get work done.

Much of this is predicated on the emergence and evolution of “digital workers”. But what are these “digital workers”? Are they humans equipped with the right technology to do better, smarter work? Or are they AI “employees” taking over roles previously done by humans?

The answer is a bit of both. Let’s explain.

What is a digital worker?

As technology advances, our definition of the digital worker is evolving. Today there are two working definitions.

One describes a virtual employee of sorts that can be trained to carry out automated tasks, such as creating invoices or answering customer questions. Forrester defines it as “a combination of IA (intelligent automation) building blocks, such as conversational intelligence and RPA (robotic process automation), that work alongside employees. They understand human intent, respond to questions, and take action on the human’s behalf, leaving humans with control, authority, and an enhanced experience.”

Allwork simplifies the definition to the following, “Technology, such as artificial intelligence or robotics, that performs tasks previously accomplished by a human worker.”

As machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) continues to improve, the complexity that digital workers can handle also progresses, enabling them to learn by doing, rather than being limited by pre-defined rules. This frees human employees for more creative and strategic work.

The second definition for a digital worker is less futuristic but no less viable and probably more relevant to the current state of most organizations. It defines a digital worker as an employee with digital skills that uses computers and/or computerized information to carry out or support their work function.

The rise of the digital worker has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic, compressing growth that normally would have taken a few years into just a few months. According to a recent global Gartner survey, technology mastery is moving faster than ever. The proportion of respondents who say they are digital experts increased by more than 30% from 2019 to 2021.

At the same time, the number of workers who want to continue to work remotely is also contributing to the rising digital workforce. According to PWC’s US Remote Work Survey from November and December of 2020, 55% of employees want to remain remote at least three days a week post-pandemic.

Upgrading accidental digital workplaces to intentional ones

More digitally savvy employees and the shift to remote working are pushing companies to ramp up their digital transformations to better retain and attract top talent. Digital workers expect technologies that are in line with their level of mastery, and the flexibility to work where, when, and how they want.

In the rush to accommodate the work-from-home situations required by the pandemic, many companies have built what we call “accidental digital workplaces”. These are experiences built less by design and more by raw need. While they may address the most pressing requirements in terms of basic communication and access, they are not built to scale and evolve.

A digital workplace should do more than just exist. It should not simply be a collection of collaboration and productivity tools that your company implemented.

Two employees connected on laptops technically comprise a digital workplace—but how good is it? What matters is the experience and the quality of the collaboration. Today’s uneven remote work experiences reveal the deficiencies in accidental digital workspaces.

Clouds, content platforms, apps, and collaboration tools are all steps in the right direction. The next phase for companies would be to transform processes using AI to augment human workers, but many aren’t there yet. In reality, what ends up happening is these technologies throw off inhuman amounts of data, which overwhelms the people doing the work.

How can companies achieve an effective and intentional digital workplace, without drowning their employees in a sea of information?