Digital transformation strategies aren’t being distributed equally, and thus far have been disproportionately felt by millennials and high-income earners, according to a recent survey of Canadians conducted by French cloud computing firm OVH.
According to the company’s OVH Barometer report, which polled 2000 residents of Ontario and Quebec (1000 from each province), only 24 per cent of Canadian workers feel technology has “totally transformed” their jobs, while another 47 per cent feel that it’s “partially transformed” them.
However, the proportion of Canadian workers who believed technology had transformed their jobs was much higher among high income earners, with 56 per cent of respondents who earned $100,000 or more annually believing that technology had transformed their job, versus 38 per cent of those earning less than $40,000 per year.
Millennials – in Ontario, at least – were also more likely than their Generation X and baby boomer counterparts to feel the impact of digital transformation, with 29 per cent of Ontario-based millennial respondents reporting that they felt the impact of technology on their jobs, versus 22 per cent of Gen X-ers (defined by the study as 35 – 54 years old) and 23 per cent of boomers (defined as 55 years old and up).
“Millennials are presumably the ones using technological tools the most in their daily jobs,” OVH communications officer Guillaume Gilbert said in a December statement. “But more than this, when strong innovation clusters occur, new professions emerge that revolutionize old ways of doing things, and millennials are often those responsible for designing and developing these advances in technology. Understandably this explains the impact reported by this age group.”
(That said, Quebec was the opposite of Ontario, with 41 per cent of boomers in La Belle Province feeling the impact of technology, versus 30 per cent each for Generation X and millennials.)
Respondents in both provinces, however, were united in their belief that lack of technological knowledge was an obstacle to employment, and that digital natives had a leg up over their analogue counterparts, with 82 per cent completely or somewhat agreeing with both premises.
“These results are interesting to see as there’s a clear belief that technology has stimulated economic growth among businesses, yet respondents don’t necessarily feel impacted by it,” Gilbert said. “The fact is, technology is changing fast and it’s imperative that cities keep up if they want to thrive in this marketplace.”