Digital Leadership and Literacy as Strategic Levers for Employee Outcomes in Pakistan's Telecommunication Sector

Digitalizing operations is essential for gaining and maintaining competitive advantage, driving product and process innovations, and ensuring effective decision-making. The performance and engagement of today’s workforce are also contingent upon its capability to handle digital technologies. Here, the digital prowess of the leaders plays a cardinal role in the digitalization process. Keeping this in mind, this research aims to determine the impact of digital leadership on employees’ digital literacy, and their subsequent effect on key employee outcomes like engagement and performance in the telecom sector of Pakistan. Data was collected from 369 telecom workers employed at the three major Pakistani telecom companies. Quantitative analysis via structural equation modelling revealed that digital leadership plays a conducive role in building employees’ digital literacy skills, thereby improving their engagement and performance at work. The research underscores the pertinence of digitalization for the modern workforce and reiterates the urgency of digitalization initiatives for businesses.