Workers in positions across nearly all industries have become savvier in their use of technology.
Such workers are sometimes described as technically or digitally literate, or even fluent in their use of technology. Given that most organizations today are in the process of digital transformation, having a workforce that can use tools to support that transformation is key. Digital literacy and digital fluency are two terms that can give leaders a framework with which to understand how well their employees are doing this.
Digital literacy vs. digital fluency
In the simplest terms, digital literacy describes an elementary level of technical acumen, while digital fluency describes advanced-level technical expertise.
Put another way, digital literacy describes the ability to use technology to perform functions or accomplish tasks, whereas digital fluency describes a competency employing technology to accomplish new or different work.
"Fluency is moving from a superficial use of technology to thinking about new ways of doing something using technology," said Karen Panetta, a fellow at the IEEE, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts University and dean of graduate education for Tuft's School of Engineering.
Such terms help executives, managers and workers themselves rate their readiness to harness the power of technology to work or, at the higher end of proficiency, to reimagine how they work and what they produce for products and services.
At many organizations, the likelihood is that workers are just beginning their journey from literacy to fluency.
"Our perspective is that the vast majority of the working population today is digitally literate -- they know how to use [technology] tools. What more of the population is missing is this digital fluency and knowing how all the technology works together," said Seth Robinson, vice president of industry research at CompTIA, a trade association providing training and certifications.
It's important to note, however, that as with many terms surrounding business technology, the terms digital literacy and digital fluency are not universally used, nor do they have universally accepted definitions.
Indeed, some business leaders prefer terms such as digital acumen, digital capabilities or digital competency more than digital literacy and digital fluency, said Adnan Masood, chief AI architect at UST, a digital transformation software company.
Business and tech leaders might also prefer to focus on specific areas of technical knowledge, describing, for example, someone with a good grasp on the use of data analytics as being "data literate" or someone who competently uses AI as possessing "AI fluency," Masood said. And other leaders simply don't use such terms. That said, even if they're not calling out tech skills specifically, most enterprise leaders recognize the importance of their workers having digital skills.
In other words, there’s a range of digital technology skills.
Digital literacy is less of a binary either/or state, and more of a continuum that starts at "I know nothing" and goes to "I'm an expert on these things, and I can implement my own solutions and can teach others," said Alan D. Duncan, a vice president and chief data and analytics officer at research firm Gartner.
Regardless of the terms in use, leaders do need to understand to what extent their employees can use and capitalize on the value of the array of digital tools that exist.
Each step in the digital innovation process is important to facilitating success.
What digital literacy means at work
Those who distinguish between digital literacy and digital fluency see it play out in the work world.
Those who are digitally literate can use technology tools as they've been instructed to use them.
As an example, workers in an office who are digitally literate can use Word, Outlook and Excel to accomplish their day-to-day tasks as they were trained or shown by others to do, Robinson said.
But they don't manipulate the tools much beyond that, he said. They can build a formula in Excel but don't know how to reconfigure the tool, seek and import new sources of data, or manipulate the data in ways that can provide them new insights or spur technology-supported innovation.
Today, a good portion of the working population in many countries are digitally literate, according to Robinson and other sources. Many -- especially digital natives -- develop their technology competency using consumer technologies, such as smartphones, and many learn in school as primary and secondary education have themselves become digitalized in recent decades. Still others learn on the job, with digital technologies now used in varying degrees by nearly all occupations -- from office administrators to retail assistants to utility workers in the field.
"Digital literacy is now something that everybody needs for their job," Panetta said. "Companies have it as a minimum expectation, just like they expect you to know how to read and write."
However, some individuals still struggle to have the digital competency required to get by professionally and personally, she said.
Consequently, organizations still need to provide training for both new hires and existing workers to help them obtain the digital skills they need to do their jobs and to gain new ones as technology and the workplace evolve. And individuals themselves must seek out opportunities to learn new digital skills and become comfortable and competent with new technologies, such as generative AI, to participate and thrive in an increasingly digital world.
What digital fluency means at work
The world of work is evolving quickly, and signs of digital fluency show up all over.
Fluency comes with time and practice.
Usman LakhaniPrincipal advisory director, Info-Tech Research Group
For example, that could be marketers using digital tools to uncover previously unexplored insights to create innovative marketing campaigns, said Usman Lakhani, principal advisory director for the data and AI team at Info-Tech Research Group. Or it could be a worker who doesn't only use generative AI to draft an email but also integrates it into everyday processes, validates the output and governs the algorithm's data.
Such competency is cultivated and requires a mix of an open, curious mindset as well as experimentation with the tools.
"Fluency comes with time and practice," Lakhani said.
Neither enterprise leaders nor individuals should expect such digital tool competency to happen by serendipity, Lakhani and others said. Rather, they should cultivate it through a mix of informal and formal training, as well as experimentation with technologies.
