RightFoot helps public sector client with setup of a digital practice

RightFoot has helped a public sector organisation in Egypt with the setup of a digital practice.

The client, with accountabilities for setting the digital transformation agenda of Egypt, has the ambition to digitise government to business and government to citizen services. This will enable the institution to bolster its productivity, while enhancing the customer experience it offers to its ‘customers’. 

One of the corner stones of the project was ensuring the setup of a new unit dedicated to digital transformation, tasked with driving the digital agenda and providing employees with the necessary skills and capabilities. This unit is accountable for defining the business needs of each government entity and defining solutions and offerings that help achieve these set goals.

Operating as a center of excellence and ‘go to’ body, the new unit leads the design and roll-out of digital change. Alongside setting up the hard aspects of the unit, including processes, governance and systems, the public sector organisation launched a workstream to build the team and their capabilities.

In collaboration with Rightfoot, an Egyptian organisational consulting firm, potential candidates for the digital unit were selected. This was based on a thorough assessment process built around three key dimensions: experience, business skills and core competencies. 

“It was critical to understand the experiences, skills, and work preferences of employees in order to be able to identify their potential fit,” explained Somaya El Sherbini, founder of Rightfoot and formerly Director of Human Resources at Microsoft for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India region.

In parallel, the roles required, aligned with the business objectives, were identified, customised, and built based on the current and future state that serves the business need.

El Sherbini: “The results of the assessments helped us create a skills inventory, where we identified the key required skills that would be required across the digital unit. This provided a clear set of skills that needed development.” 

Blended learning

Then, a detailed learning framework was designed spanning the core and functional competencies of each role. The learning activities included in the framework were built using the 70:20:10 methodology, which according to El Sherbini “aligns with evidence that a combined learning experience that mixes learning by doing has the biggest impact on re-skilling and up-skilling.”

The learning methodology, also known as ‘blended learning’, was effective in teaching the fundamentals of a skill. Using virtual classrooms and digital learning aids (eLearning content), participants could further beef up their knowledge. 

“We cemented this learning experience by matching people to each other, whereby those who had a specific skill (be it business or a core skill) were assigned as subject matter experts and identified as Coaches. They were matched with those who needed to build that skill, who were identified as Coachees. The use of automation by adopting a coaching platform to track and monitor progress was key in providing a fair amount of data to be able to make more informed decisions.” 

Benefits

With the key skills needed for the digital future under their belt, the digital unit is capable of educating and driving the change. Its experts are able to champion digital change efforts internally across the public sector entity’s different business units.