Sanjay Singh, University of Dundee

Sateesh Shet, Northumbria University

Tanya Bondarouk, The University of Twente

Paresha Sinha, University of Waikato

James Duggan, Cork University Business School

The acceleration of digital transformation across industries has reshaped the nature of work and the workforce. In this evolving landscape, a new kind of employee has emerged, one that is digitally fluent, technology-enabled, and increasingly reliant on digital tools to perform, collaborate, and innovate. This digitally-savvy workforce brings with it a unique set of expectations, behaviors, and capabilities that are fundamentally altering traditional models of Human Resource Management.

As organizations navigate this shift, HRM must move beyond conventional practices to align with the realities of a workforce deeply embedded in digital ecosystems. The integration of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual collaboration platforms, and HR analytics is not only transforming operational HR functions but also reshaping strategic priorities around talent acquisition, workforce planning, performance management, employee engagement, and learning and development.

The significance of this transformation extends beyond technology adoption, requiring the need for redefining work design, leadership, culture, and employee experience in a digital-first world. The increasing demand for flexibility, autonomy, continuous learning, and meaningful digital interactions places HRM at the centre of driving organizational agility and future-readiness. Questions around digital equity, ethics in algorithmic decision-making, surveillance, digital fatigue, and the digital divide call for exploration and evidence-based solutions.

The rise of the digitally-savvy workforce marks a structural inflection point in the evolution of work and HRM. The digitally-savvy workforce encompasses a broader, cross-generational cohort of employees who have acquired advanced digital competencies through education, experience, or continuous upskilling. This workforce does not merely use technology, they strategically engage with digital tools, platforms, and data as core enablers of their work, collaboration, and innovation.

There is a critical gap in research concerning the mental health and well-being challenges unique to digitally-savvy employees in the workplace, such as digital burnout, blurred boundaries between work and life, and stress from social media. Furthermore, HRM has long been concerned with employee well-being, yet digitally-savvy employees' constant connectivity and digital-centric lifestyles introduce new risks that are underexplored in the literature.

For HRM, this presents both transformative potential and considerable complexity. On one hand, digitally-savvy employees are key assets in driving automation, agility, and innovation. On the other hand, their expectations for real-time feedback, flexible work structures, digital autonomy, and continuous learning challenge the static assumptions that underpin many legacy HRM practices. There is an increasing mismatch between the agility of the workforce and the inertia of HR systems still grounded in procedural and administrative logic.

While there is growing interest in digital transformation, there remains a critical gap in our understanding of how HRM can effectively align with and support a digital-savvy workforce. Issues such as workforce planning for digital roles, work design for tech-mediated environments, AI-driven performance management, and ethical concerns around digital monitoring remain under-theorized. Equally, the psychological impacts, such as techno-overload, digital presenteeism, and the erosion of work-life boundaries, are insufficiently addressed within the current HRM discourse.

This Special Issue seeks to explore these challenges and opportunities by reframing the HRM research agenda through the lens of digitally-savvy workforce readiness and transformation. It calls for contributions that examine how HRM can evolve to strategically manage and empower a digitally capable workforce while balancing human-centric values and organizational imperatives. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate the technological expectations that digitally-savvy workforces bring to the workplace, including their demand for flexibility, autonomy, digital communication, and purpose-driven work.

This Special Issue seeks to advance new theoretical contributions that reflect the shifting realities of HRM in the context of a digitally-savvy workforce. Contributions should foreground digital capabilities as core constructs in HRM theory and examine how the integration of digital technologies into daily work life reshapes the employee experience. Technological affordance theory, digital transformation theory, HRM systems theory, social exchange theory, ecological systems theory, and the job demands-resources model offer valuable frameworks for examining these issues.

A fundamental transformation is underway in how talent is managed across borders, driven by the growing presence of a digitally-savvy workforce. Across diverse international contexts, digitally savvy employees are challenging long-established HRM systems through expectations shaped by AI-enhanced workflows, platform-based collaboration, hybrid work models, and a heightened demand for flexibility, autonomy, and continuous development. These expectations are filtered through local institutional logics, labor market structures, and cultural norms, creating varying patterns of digital adoption, employee engagement, and HRM innovation around the world.

This call for papers seeks to illuminate how multinational organizations, international institutions, and global HR functions are reevaluating leadership, organizational culture, performance systems, learning pathways, and inclusion practices in response to the evolving digital capabilities of their workforce. As the digitalization of work becomes increasingly global in scale but locally embedded in practice, the need for comparative, cross-national HRM research becomes critical.

Potential topics

• Strategic workforce planning for the digital era, including forecasting digital talent needs, digital upskilling frameworks, and bridging digital skills gaps
• Work design for digitally enabled workforce, encompassing job roles in technology-mediated environments, digital flexibility, autonomy, work-life integration, and remote work impacts
• Emerging digital technologies and HRM transformation, including AI, blockchain, virtual reality, chatbots, intelligent automation, and HR digital twins
• Redefining talent acquisition for digitally-savvy workforce through social media recruitment, gamified assessments, AI in recruitment, and employer branding
• Performance management in tech-driven organizations, covering digital dashboards, algorithmic evaluation, surveillance, real-time feedback, and fairness implications
• Employee engagement and experience in digital workspaces, including digital platforms, AI-driven personalization, digital fatigue, and tech-enabled burnout
• Ethics, privacy, and surveillance in digital workplace, addressing algorithmic monitoring, employee autonomy, and ethical HR technology adoption
• Inclusion, equity, and accessibility in digital HR practices, focusing on digital exclusion reduction, neurodiverse talent support, and fair AI-driven decision-making

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Publication of Special Issue
• August 1, 2026: Manuscript submission window opens
• September 30, 2026: Manuscript submission deadline