Workplace literacy skills—how information and digital literacy affect adoption of digital technology

Purpose Information and digital literacy have recently received much interest, and they are being viewed as critical strategic organisational resources and skills that employees need to obtain in order to function at their workplaces. Yet, the role of employees' literacy seems to be neglected in current literature. This paper aims to explore the roles that information and digital literacy play on the employees' perception in relation to usefulness and ease of use of digital technologies and consequently their intention to use technology in the practices they perform at the workplace. Design/methodology/approach This paper builds a conceptual model with key constructs (information literacy and digital literacy) as new antecedents to the technology acceptance model and aims to establish that information literacy and digital literacy are indirect determinants of employees' intention to use digital technologies at the workplace. The data set used in this paper comprises of 121 respondents and structural equation modelling was used. Findings The findings reveal that both information literacy and digital literacy have a direct impact on perceived ease of use of technology but not on the perceive usefulness. The findings also show that both literacies have an indirect impact on the intention to use digital technology at work via attitude towards use. Practical implications Managers and decision-makers should pay close attention to the literacy levels of their staff. Because literacies are such an important skillset in the digital age, managers and chief information officers may want to start by identifying which work groups or individuals require literacy training and instruction, and then provide specific and relevant training or literacy interventions to help those who lack sufficient literacy. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to consider information literacy and digital literacy as new antecedents of the technology acceptance model at the workplace environment.