Roadmap for establishing a common channel for digital skills development : Developing employees’ digital skills in the Jönköping Region

Abstract: Background: In the past few decades, organizations has shifted towards digitalization. Making it necessary for employees within an organization to acquire the necessary digital skills to cope with digitalization. These skills are necessary for employees to carry out their daily activities without setback. It is therefore important for an organization to provide a channel or an avenue for employees to acquire these skills without stress or difficulty.     Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to explore an innovative strategy for digital skills development for employees, which can foster communication and collaboration and improve employees work performance within the organization.   Method: A qualitative study was used to conduct the research. The authors used semi-structured interviews to collect data from employees of the municipalities being studied. The interviewees were employees from Nässjö, Jönköping and Habo municipalities. From the interview findings an analysis was performed comparing the findings between the three municipalities.   Conclusion: The results outline some of the benefits of using innovative learning systems for digital skills development of employees and how these leaning systems can improve employees’ performance. Organizations should make it a priority to continually reinvest in developing employees’ digital skills in the public sector and need to be aware about the barriers to adopt innovative learning methods. Some of these barriers are lack of training programs, lack of managerial support among others. A coherent strategy is needed to address these barriers and facilitate skills development process. Further research regarding other alternative methods to improve employees’ digital skills that were not discussed in this research can be explored by other researchers using larger samples, different theories and data collection methods.