Building People-First Operating Models for Business Growth

The British business environment is transforming rapidly. From corner shops embracing contactless payments to major corporations implementing artificial intelligence, every organisation faces mounting pressure to modernise. Yet amid all the discussion about digital transformation, we often overlook a fundamental truth: businesses succeed through people, not just technology.

Having spent twenty years guiding UK companies through complex change initiatives, we've witnessed how the most sophisticated technical solutions can fail spectacularly without proper human foundations. The facts paint a stark picture: more than half our workforce cannot perform all twenty digital tasks now considered essential for employment, costing our economy over £23 billion annually. Behind each statistic lies a person struggling to adapt, learn, and contribute meaningfully to their organisation's success.

Understanding Our Starting Point

Britain's digital transformation market exceeds £60 billion in value and continues expanding. Yet beneath these impressive figures lies a more nuanced reality. While nine in ten UK companies have adopted advanced digital technologies, many of these implementations remain superficial and expensive additions that haven't genuinely integrated into daily operations.

Consider Emma, a purchasing coordinator we recently supported. Her employer had invested substantially in cloud-based analytics promising to revolutionise supplier relationships. However, Emma, despite fifteen years of excellent performance, felt overwhelmed by endless dashboards and notifications. She wasn't resisting change. She was drowning in poorly implemented transformation. This scenario repeats across British workplaces.

The statistics reveal our challenge: half of working-age adults struggle with essential digital workplace tasks. More concerning, 58% report their employers have never provided digital skills training. We're essentially asking people to navigate deeper waters without teaching them to swim.

The Human Aspect Hides in Plain Sight

When discussing digitally enabled operating models, we typically emphasise technical architecture and system integrations whilst overlooking the fundamental dependency on confident, capable people.

The Personal Impact of Perpetual Change

Every failed digital transformation conceals stories of people feeling abandoned. Implementing new systems without adequate support creates more than operational inefficiencies — it generates anxiety, frustration, and disengagement. I've observed talented, experienced professionals questioning their competence simply because they couldn't master poorly designed or inadequately explained platforms.

The human cost is tangible. Workers report that lacking digital skills has constrained their earnings, advancement opportunities, and career development. This transcends business concerns — it represents a social challenge affecting families, communities, and individual wellbeing throughout the UK.

Beyond the Technical Skills Shortage

Our digital skills crisis extends far beyond recruiting programmers or data analysts. It encompasses finance assistants struggling with new expense platforms, sales managers unable to interpret customer relationship management reports, and human resources directors lost in workforce analytics interfaces.

This challenge spans every sector. Even within our technology industry, one of our digital flagships, one in five workers cannot complete all essential digital tasks. If the tech sector faces these difficulties, imagine the challenges confronting traditional industries like manufacturing, retail, or healthcare.

Sector-Specific Challenges: Consumer Products

Consumer products companies face particularly acute digital transformation pressures because changes affect every customer touchpoint. Businesses must create seamless omnichannel experiences whilst their internal teams grapple with fragmented systems and data silos.

Imagine a medium-sized consumer goods manufacturer competing against Amazon and emerging direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. They require real-time inventory visibility, personalised marketing capabilities, and agile supply chain management. However, their, often tiny, procurement, marketing, and logistics teams might work across five disconnected systems.

The human challenge proves immense. Marketing teams must become comfortable with attribution modelling and customer lifetime value analysis. Procurement professionals must adapt to artificial intelligence-driven demand forecasting that may contradict years of experience. Customer service representatives need training on platforms aggregating data from multiple touchpoints.

The emotional and mental journey of the team members matters as much as the customer journey.
When implementing demand planning systems for an FMCG client, the primary obstacle wasn't technical. It involved helping experienced planners trust algorithmic recommendations alongside their hard-earned intuition. Success emerged not from overriding their expertise but from demonstrating how technology could complement their knowledge.

Sector-Specific Challenges: Pharmaceuticals

The pharmaceutical industry presents distinctive challenges because regulatory compliance and scientific rigour must coexist with digital agility. Companies simultaneously attempt to accelerate drug research and clinical trials through artificial intelligence whilst maintaining meticulous documentation and approval processes ensuring patient safety.

For UK pharmaceutical firms, digitally enabled operations might involve using machine learning for compound identification, managing clinical trials through digital platforms, and manufacturing personalised medicines. However, this transformation must occur within one of the most regulated environments.

The human dimension proves complex. Research scientists, many with decades of experience, must learn collaborating with artificial intelligence systems. Clinical trial coordinators need managing virtual trials and remote patient monitoring. Quality assurance teams must validate digital processes they might not fully comprehend.

I've worked with pharmaceutical companies where brilliant chemists felt their expertise was being diminished by algorithmic screening tools. Breakthrough came when we positioned artificial intelligence not as replacement but as research assistance — something handling routine analysis so scientists could focus on creative problem-solving and complex interpretation.

Britain's Unique Context

Operating within the UK adds complexity layers making human-centred digital transformation even more critical.

Brexit's Continuing Effects

Regulatory uncertainty following Brexit hasn't merely affected trade relationships — it's created ongoing stress for workers navigating constantly changing compliance requirements. Digital systems functioning seamlessly across European markets now require different configurations, permissions, and data handling approaches.

This uncertainty creates emotional strain. Teams once confident in their expertise now second-guess decisions because rules keep shifting. Digital transformation becomes harder when people already manage change fatigue from broader economic and political upheaval.

Economic Pressures and Investment Hesitation

With inflation affecting household budgets and business costs rising across sectors, UK companies face intense pressure justifying every pound spent on digital transformation. This creates challenging dynamics where organisations recognise the need for digital capabilities but struggle building business cases, particularly for "softer" investments in training and change management.

The human impact proves significant. Teams are asked to accomplish more with less whilst simultaneously learning new working methods. This pressure-cooker environment can generate resistance, burnout, and higher turnover — precisely the opposite of what successful digital transformation requires. Regional Disparities and Infrastructure Variations

Digital infrastructure varies dramatically across the UK. Whilst London and the South East enjoy excellent connectivity and digital talent access, other regions face substantial challenges. This creates practical barriers implementing cloud-based systems and remote collaboration tools.

More subtly, it creates cultural divisions within organisations. Head office teams might embrace digital-first approaches whilst regional operations feel abandoned or inadequately supported. This divide can undermine the cohesion necessary for successful transformation.

Creating Human-Centred Digital Operating Models

How do we design digitally enabled operating models that genuinely work for real people in actual organisations? Here are principles I've found most effective:

Begin With Understanding, Not Technology

Before designing new processes or systems, invest time understanding current human experiences. What does a typical day involve for people who'll use these new tools? Where do they feel confident, and where do they struggle? What are their unspoken concerns about change?

This extends beyond user experience design — it involves acknowledging that transformation fundamentally represents an emotional journey. People need feeling heard, supported, and valued throughout the process.

Create Progressive Capability Development

Rather than implementing wholesale system changes, establish pathways for people building confidence gradually. This might mean starting with basic digital tasks and celebrating small victories before progressing to more complex processes.

One manufacturing company created "digital confidence circles" — small employee groups learning new tools together and supporting each other through challenges. This peer-to-peer approach proved more effective than traditional training courses because it acknowledged learning's inherently social nature.

Invest in Human Infrastructure

Technology infrastructure receives substantial attention, but human infrastructure — training, support systems, and cultural changes needed for success — often receives inadequate investment. Yet research demonstrates organisations with strong change management practices are six times more likely meeting project objectives.

This means budgeting appropriately for training, creating clear communication channels for questions and concerns, and establishing support networks persisting beyond initial implementation periods.

Establish Safety Nets for Experimentation

People need permission making mistakes and learning. This proves particularly important in the UK context, where risk aversion can be high and regulatory concerns are ever-present. Creating safe spaces for experimentation — whether through pilot programmes, sandboxed environments, or clear "fail fast, learn quickly" protocols — helps people build confidence with new tools.

Measure What Matters to People

Traditional project metrics focus on technical implementation milestones or financial returns. However, human-centred transformation requires different measures: How confident do people feel with new tools? How has their work satisfaction changed? Can they focus on higher-value activities?

These softer metrics often predict long-term success better than technical benchmarks because they indicate whether transformation is genuinely sustainable.

Moving Forward: Practical Steps

For UK organisations embarking on or refining their digital operating models, focus here:

Assess your human readiness alongside technical readiness.

Most organisations maintain detailed technology landscape assessments but limited understanding of their people's digital confidence and capability gaps.

Invest in middle management as transformation champions.

Research consistently demonstrates people managers are key to successful change, yet they're often excluded from transformation planning or given inadequate support leading their teams through change.

Establish clear career pathways in the digital age.

People need to see how developing digital skills will benefit their long-term career prospects, not just help them cope with current changes.

Build partnerships with educational providers. Rather than attempting to solve skills gaps entirely through internal training, collaborate with universities, colleges, and training providers creating pathways for continuous learning.

Design governance that enables rather than constrains.

Particularly important in regulated industries, governance frameworks need supporting experimentation and learning whilst maintaining necessary controls and compliance.

The Essential Truth: Technology Serves People

The most successful digitally enabled operating models we've encountered share one characteristic: they improve people's working lives, not just increase efficiency. They reduce frustration rather than adding to it. They enhance human capability rather than replacing it.

This doesn't mean avoiding difficult technological changes or settling for suboptimal solutions. It means designing transformation programmes acknowledging change's human reality — that it's messy, emotional, and deeply personal.

The UK possesses tremendous advantages in the global digital economy: world-class universities, innovative companies, and regulatory environments that, whilst complex, generally support fair competition and innovation. However, our greatest asset remains our people — their creativity, resilience, and adaptation ability.

Organisations thriving in the coming decade will understand this fundamental truth: digital transformation isn't about technology transforming business — it's about people using technology to create better outcomes for customers, communities, and themselves.

In a world where artificial intelligence can write code and algorithms optimise supply chains, our uniquely human capabilities — empathy, creative problem-solving, ethical reasoning, and trust-building ability become more valuable, not less.
The most successful digital operating models will amplify these human strengths whilst using technology to handle routine tasks and provide better decision-making information.

The choice UK businesses face isn't whether to embrace digital transformation. Competitive pressures and customer expectations have made that decision for us. The choice is whether to pursue transformation that energises and empowers our people, or exhausts and alienates them.

Organisations choosing the human-centred path won't just survive the digital revolution — they'll lead it.