How do you strengthen digital skills and change power?

#strengthen #digital #skills #change #power

The meeting was set up for everyone who is involved in learning and development and works for members of NVZ, NFU or ZKN. Around 60 participants attended the program in Kontakt der Kontinenten in Soesterberg. They included HR and Training managers, a CMIO and CNIOs, learning & development advisors, a doctor’s assistant, digital care project leaders, a Everyone Digital Skills project manager, a digital skills management trainee, digitalization staff advisors, an HR business partner, policy advisors and operational managers. A wide range of functions, which immediately shows that strengthening the digital skills of employees does not belong within one department: it concerns everyone in the healthcare institution.

The participants enjoyed the thorough presentations of 2 experts: Martijn Aslander and Eveline Wouters. After each presentation, the participants discussed what had been said with their table companions. The central questions were: what are you already doing in this area? What can you get started on tomorrow? What do you need for that? This provided illuminating insights.

Digital fitness

Martijn Aslander calls himself a philosopher of technology. He is the founder of the foundation Digital Fitness and creator of the well-known hashtag #dtv. Aslander is a man with a mission: making the world digitally fitter. “You are information workers. The amazing thing: no one has ever taught us how to process information. We just do whatever. Video calling is the biggest cognitive challenge of all time; a crime. The computer would make our lives more fun and easier, but actually it is better to stay away from it as much as possible. How do you get more done in less time?”

“We actually don’t like to change, because that takes 8x more energy than leaving everything as it is. Learning and change happens best when you do it yourself and when you repeat it,” Aslander said. As a tool he has a framework for digital fitness with 5 pillars, can be found at Digital Fitness. This model applies to anyone who spends more than 4.5 hours a day in front of a screen. “That amount of time is the maximum time that a knowledge worker can provide energy per day to do the work. Partly in the morning, partly in the afternoon. We still think about working with your hands, which you can do all day long. The idea ‘more screen time equals more productivity’ is incorrect. You can no longer distinguish between main and secondary issues. The younger generation deals with this better than older people, they are more likely to choose to work a maximum of 4 days a week and a maximum of 5 hours a day. We are not made for screens!”

Technology is human work

In the second presentation, participants gained insight into the factors that contribute to the acceptance and implementation of digital technology by healthcare workers. Eveline Wouters from Tilburg University highlighted various theoretical models.

Wouters discussed, among other things, the ‘Technology acceptance model’ (TAM, technology acceptance model). That’s about the question: do people find it useful and is it easy to use? If so, this contributes to their attitude towards use, the intention to use and the actual use. Social influencers also play a role in acceptance, as does the question of whether the innovation is mandatory or voluntary, what it costs, how common it is now (such as a mobile phone) and whether there is a so-called ‘hedonic motivation’: is it a ‘nice to see’, or stigmatizing like an auxiliary button on a chain. “What you have to take into account if you want to scale up technology: you can learn from each other, but the situation is never exactly the same everywhere.”

COMB-B-model

Another model that helps to understand why people do something is the COM-B model. This assumes that a combination of ability (Capability), opportunity (Opportunity) and motivation (Motivation) leads to behavior (Behaviour). Take, for example, an elderly person who has no use for technology and ends up living in a nursing home. At the time of corona, contact with family was not possible, except via a mobile phone. This can be the trigger to use a mobile phone (opportunity).

The technological change must be carefully coordinated in advance with each group. A theory that deals with this is the Normalization Process Theory. This model is based on 4 constructs: does everyone understand its usefulness, how long do people continue to do this, what collective action is happening (helpdesk, time to learn) and is there reflection/monitoring: looking back at how the innovation has gone? The latter is done very rarely, Eveline Wouters notes.

Interested in this topic? Follow the Kennisnet group

On the NVZ Kennisnet you will find the Kennisnet group Digital skills. With news, agenda, notice board, questions & answers and documents.

Go to Home | NVZ Knowledgenet and log in with name and password (only for NVZ members). Search for Digital skills and register for the Kennisnet group. There is also an extended version of the above article, with the presentations by Aslander and Wouters.