The digital transformation is making its presence felt in large parts of the job market and is shaping the debate over the shortage of skilled workers. On the one hand, it has the potential to mitigate this shortage, as certain processes can be automated. On the other, it will exacerbate it, because the growing need for digital literacy also requires increasing numbers of expert staff. The question is how to handle this shift in skilled labour.
War for digital talents
The battle for highly qualified, highly talented employees has expanded its scope significantly to encompass the field of “digital experts” in its entirety. And needs are continuing to grow. We have already discussed digitalisation, how to deal with it and what fears are dominating the job market in our blog posts Digitalisation in four dimensions and Digital transformation and the fear factor. Although it will not be possible to replace human beings entirely, the onward march of automation will render certain tasks obsolete as time goes on – so they will need some new responsibilities and skills.
Although this might be enough to curb the shortage of some specialists from times past, there is a danger of it shifting to the IT sector. This shift and displacement is hugely significant as far as qualifications are concerned. As Gartner Talent Neuron™, a US market research firm specialising in IT, reports: “Almost a third of the skills listed in a 2018 job ad are outdated in 2022.” It is not only the progress of technology itself that is extremely fast: the requirements made of those that have to deal with this progress are also changing rapidly.
Learn, learn, learn
The old saying that we don’t learn for school but for life is taking on almost dramatic relevance. A business, whether it’s an SME or a global corporation, needs to focus all its efforts on creating and expending learning and development initiatives if it wants to stay competitive.
The best solution in the hunt for “new” experts is to train them yourself, i.e. by giving your existing staff the opportunity to get different or higher qualifications. One potential strategy in this transformation of skilled labour is undoubtedly to prioritise your own employees and enable them to familiarise themselves with digital technologies. We showed how promising this can be in our most recent blog post using examples such as the learning academies at Graz University of Technology. This is backed up by a recent report by salesforce, which says that “employees feel more productive (74%), more dedicated (72%) and more satisfied with their work (69%) if their employer is investing in digital integration measures. Companies that invest in narrowing their qualification gap experience lower turnover, with as many as 66% of staff more likely to stick around.”
If a business successfully manages to attenuate the “old” shortage of skilled labour by taking some digital steps, it will certainly be well placed to avoid a new shortage of IT experts through its own efforts and with suitable measures. There is also space for additional multipliers in this time of upheaval:
Agents for transformation
After all, a workforce is not just full of sceptics. Instead – albeit more infrequently, unfortunately – it will also contain some highly motivated individuals who see opportunities in digitalisation: for their career, for their area of responsibility, whatever the reason. What modern employers who move with the times are looking for, these people have in spades: they are perfectly au fait with digital developments and keep up with the latest news; they can handle critical thinking and analysis; they possess problem-solving, self-management and active learning skills – the capabilities recently identified by the World Economic Forum as being the hallmark of the ideal employee. However, even workers of this ilk need the right environment in order to apply their skills to the full and hone them further. Particularly high-skilled and highly motivated staff have the capacity to support the digitalisation process in businesses as “agents for transformation”. An AppDynamics study on these agents illustrates just how innovative a company’s own workforce can be if you let them and give them a conducive framework. Innovative IT managers would do well to read a cloudmagazin article on this very topic (https://www.cloudmagazin.com/2019/01/02/hier-sind-die-agenten-der-transformation/, in German).
“If we solve the skills shortage...”
“…Whoever doesn’t see the skills shortage as an opportunity will remain threatened by it,” is the somewhat provocative view of Michael Swoboda, a training expert and CEO of the Austrian training provider ETC. There can be no doubts about what’s going on: not only are technologies and processes changing, but requirements, skills and job profiles are evolving along with them – incredibly fast. Agility and a willingness to learn are the most important elements on the journey into and through the digital transformation. As is, of course, a suitable strategy that cannot be either formulated or implemented overnight – only step by step.
We would be delighted to help and advise you on every single one of these steps: https://digital-2-go.com/en/contact.
Sustainable digitalisation, step by step https://digital-2-go.com/.
