Employees’ Acceptance of Digital Technologies: Assessment Tools for a Comprehensive Evaluation of Digital Technologies During Implementation

Experts in all major industries are currently deeply concerned about two profound, evolving changes: the difficult and costly implementation of digital transformation measures in their companies and the growing shortage of skilled workers. Employers and politicians are pinning high hopes on digitalization to alleviate the growing skills shortage. Successful digitalization, in turn, requires staff always qualified to the latest standards. To bring this together, reliable tools are needed to more carefully monitor and evaluate the design, workplace implementation, and on-the-job training of digital innovations. Guided by a human resource development approach, in this study, employees’ digital technology acceptance (N = 323 aged 18-65) was measured using a cognitive TAM2-based acceptance scale combined with scales measuring motivation central to new learning challenges. The assessment tools validated here are suitable for evaluating new digital technologies by future users (employees, consumers) and can also be used to capture training progress in on-the-job training.