Your team might be great at what they do, but are they keeping pace with the tools they use to do it? As software evolves, new tools are introduced, and workflows shift, even the most capable employees can find themselves stuck in outdated habits or struggling to adapt.
The signs aren’t always obvious, but they can quietly erode productivity, collaboration, and morale. If you’ve noticed hesitation around new platforms, an increase in tech-related frustrations, or a slowdown in day-to-day operations, it could be time for a digital skills refresh.
Identifying the need for a digital skills upgrade isn’t always straightforward. This post outlines five telltale signs that your team may be falling behind and provides guidance on how to turn things around with targeted, effective technical training.
These five telltale signs tell you if your team is falling behind in digital skills.
Equipped with this knowledge and an actionable checklist, you’ll be better prepared to bridge the gap and empower your team to thrive in the digital age. The journey towards transformation begins with recognizing these crucial indicators and taking decisive action.
The 5 Signs
Before getting into the specifics, it helps to define the signs your team is facing a widening digital skills gap. These five indicators are visible across different departments, roles, and seniority levels. They range from surface-level frustrations, such as constant tech support requests, to deeper, systemic issues, including inefficient workflows and declining engagement.
Together, these signs paint a clear picture of where your organization may be faltering. By monitoring these symptoms, leaders can take action before the gap becomes a drag on employee performance and increases their desire to leave their job for greener pastures.
A digital skills gap can quickly become a drag on employee and company performance.
While one sign in isolation may not be alarming, the presence of multiple signals should serve as a wake-up call. The good news is that identifying them is only the first step, and this section will help you identify them.
After identifying the signs that your team needs a digital skills refresh, we’ll provide some practical strategies to guide your digital skills refresh initiative. With the right approach, you can turn these warning signs into real change that helps your organization thrive.
Frequent Tech Support Requests
One of the earliest and most visible signs of a digital skills gap is a spike in help desk tickets and support calls. Or at least calls that can easily be deflected with proper training or resources for employees to help themselves.
When employees lack confidence or competence with essential software and hardware, they resort to the service desk for tasks they could handle independently if properly trained. This dependence not only strains your tech team but also slows down the entire organization.
The help desk is an innefficient way to handle most employee’s technical issues.
Frequent tech support requests suggest that your training programs might be outdated or insufficient. The goal is to reduce help desk calls, not simply accept the volume and keep hiring support reps.
If employees are repeatedly asking basic questions, such as how to use collaboration tools, manage cloud storage, or perform specific tasks in an application, they may not have received proper training, either during onboarding or software training when switching to a new system.
Low Adoption of New Tools
Rolling out a new digital platform involves significant investment in licensing, customization, and deployment. Yet, if employees cling to legacy processes or avoid the new tools altogether, this investment goes to waste. Even if they can’t avoid the tool, they can definitely use it in a way that’s counterproductive to its potential improvements.
Low adoption rates can stem from resistance to change, a lack of clear communication about the benefits, or simply insufficient training on the new system’s features. It’s critical to measure adoption through usage metrics and user feedback.
Are people logging in regularly? Are they using everything they’re supposed to for their job? If not, you may be facing a digital skills gap where users lack the confidence or know-how to take full advantage of the tools they should be using.
Inefficient Workflows
When digital processes feel cumbersome instead of helpful, employees are unlikely to take to them very well, if at all. They may not fully grasp the potential of the tool, nor care to modify their work to fit a tool that doesn’t work for them.
Common symptoms include manual workarounds, such as downloading data to spreadsheets for analysis, sending documents via email for approvals, or duplicating efforts across different platforms. These efforts are significant time wasters and introduce errors at every step.
Inefficient workflows can arise from issues with software implementation, but they can also result from inadequate training. Identifying the reasons behind an inefficient workflow is the first step in fixing it.
Poor Collaboration in Digital Environments
In today’s hybrid and remote work settings, collaboration tools are essential. However, when your team struggles to share files, coordinate tasks, or communicate in real time, productivity suffers. You’d think using these tools would be second nature by now, but even for those who have been fumbling through them, without good training, improvements will never be seen.
Disjointed communication channels, version-control issues, and missed notifications are all symptoms of a deeper digital skills gap in collaborative technologies. Collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Asana require more than just sign-on credentials; they demand an understanding of channels, integrations, tagging, permissions, and best practices for virtual meetings.
If your employees aren’t leveraging shared workspaces, commenting features, or task-assignment tools effectively, projects can stall and accountability can erode.
Declining Productivity or Engagement
One of the most alarming signs of digital ineptitude is when overall team productivity or morale starts to degrade. You may notice longer project timelines, missed deadlines, or a decrease in output quality. Behind it may be employee frustration, overwhelm, or worse, complete disengagement.
Employees who feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or disengaged are likely spending too much mental energy trying to figure out digital systems, rather than focusing on creative or strategic work. This decline can erode organizational culture and lead to higher turnover rates.
Recognizing that a growing digital skills gap affects not just operational efficiency but also engagement is crucial. By proactively investing in your team’s skill development, you can reverse these negative trends and cultivate a more motivated and productive workforce.
Why Digital Skills Matter More Than Ever
The pace of technological innovation continues to accelerate, driven by AI, automation, data analytics, and cloud computing. While there’s a lot of discussion among leaders about how AI might replace employees, the more likely scenario is that, with the right training, employees can use AI to do more with less.
Companies that fail to keep their workforce’s capabilities aligned with these advances (or try to replace employees with AI) risk losing relevance. A robust digital skillset isn’t just about keeping up with tools; it’s about empowering employees to solve problems creatively, optimize processes, and drive competitive advantage.
Technology will continue to grow in importance as companies grow more competetive and faster paced.
Training enables these possibilities. Bridging the digital skills gap has tangible business benefits. Trained employees work faster, make fewer errors, and generate higher-quality results. They’re better equipped to adapt when new platforms emerge, reducing downtime and the need for costly retraining.
Digital skills matter more than ever because they contribute to a culture of continuous learning. This culture attracts top talent and enhances employee retention by demonstrating your commitment to professional growth.
What to Do About It
Once you’ve identified the warning signs, the next step is to develop an action plan. Begin by conducting a skills assessment across roles, technologies, and processes. Surveys and self-evaluations can be useful in uncovering first-hand experience of what employees feel they are lacking.
Performance data before and after a software rollout can pinpoint critical gaps. Once there’s a better understanding of where the problem lies, prioritize training initiatives based on their business impact. That means focusing on areas that will yield the greatest efficiency gains and risk mitigation. This may be a training issue, but it could also be a problem with the tools themselves, which training cannot fix.
Your plan might include a variety of system changes, software changes, or even training changes/updates. If more training is needed, which is often a huge part of a digital skills refresh, the right type of training is necessary. It’s not necessarily about a blend of modalities but instead the right modalities.
Technical training can sometimes be the best solution for helping employees use company technology better.
Whatever the right modalities for training are, establishing clear performance objectives is essential before taking any action. Without contributing to performance, training is a time waster. How training impacts the workplace is necessary; therefore, success metrics are a must. Are there reductions in support tickets, improved tool adoption rates, and measurable productivity improvements?
Securing leadership buy-in and allocating dedicated time for employees to participate in training without compromising their workloads is important. Asking employees to do the same work and learn how to use new tools on top of that, with no extra time, is an unreasonable and irresponsible ask.
The Digital Skills Refresh Checklist
Implementing a digital skills refresh initiative requires organization and accountability. Determining if an issue exists is the first step to fixing the problem. Determining if there’s an issue is the first step in fixing it.
Download the digital skills refresh checklist to see if your team may need a refresh.
Wrap Up
Bridging the digital skills gap is no longer optional; it’s essential for staying competitive and cultivating an engaged workforce. Without an engaged workforce, there’s a good chance growth won’t continue, and a potential toxic workplace could spread.
By recognizing the five warning signs and following a structured action plan, you can turn technological challenges into growth opportunities. Remember to leverage the refresh checklist to determine if a digital refresh is needed, secure executive support, and foster a continuous learning environment.
By taking steps to ensure employees are equipped to do their work more effectively, your team will be able to embrace new tools, streamline workflows, and drive lasting innovation. That doubly applies to AI, which isn’t a replacement for good workers but rather an amplifier of them.
We’d love to discuss your organization’s need for a digital skills refresh and see if we can play a valuable role in your growth. Schedule a free consultation if you’re ready to enhance employee use of company technology.