India's IT workers are world's most digitally adaptive, says survey

Bengaluru: Sixty-seven per cent of digital workers in India said emerging technologies such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) are increasing their effectiveness at work, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

The Gartner 2019 Digital Workplace Survey found that India is the most digitally dexterous country in the world followed by the UK and the US, due to having the largest Gen Z workforce along with the desire to learn new skills using digital technologies in the workplace.

Twenty-seven per cent of the digital workers in India are skilled experts in digital technology for work purposes, the research and advisory firm said in a statement.

"Seven out of ten employees in India said that adoption of new digital technologies will create career opportunities and higher paying jobs," said Rashmi Choudhary, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"Technical professionals are firm believers of adopting new digital technologies in comparison to manual, skilled and semi-skilled manual workers."

In terms of tools that employees use for real-time collaboration, digital workers in Singapore and India use real-time messaging and social media network tools more frequently than their counterparts in China, France, Germany, the US and the UK.

"Digital tools improve employee collaboration through crowdsourcing and cross-pollination, thereby improving the digital dexterity of workers," Choudhary said.

Forty-five percent of digital workers in India do not mind having their work habits tracked and monitored by digital technologies. This figure is the highest among the surveyed respondents.

"Digital workers in India believe that an intelligent workplace contributes to increased focus on more meaningful, business-critical work. At the same time, they expect that their organisation is mitigating the risk it entails by being monitored," she said.

The survey also showed that digital workers not only want formal training which consists of classroom modules and workshops but are also willing to undertake on-the-job (OTJ) and just-in-time (JIT) training to enhance their digital skills at work.

In India, 39 per cent of digital workers want to be trained OTJ to keep their knowledge on AI, ML, IoT up to date, which is the highest amongst the survey respondents, Gartner said.