How can we bridge the tech skills gap?

Kyndryl’s Nick Drouet says that in order to address the growing tech skills shortage, education institutions, industry players and governments need a new approach.

The tech sector is facing a critical skills shortage. For example, the UK government reported that the digital skills gap costs the UK economy around £63bn per year. Further afield, the European Digital Economy and Society Index found that every third person who works in Europe lacks basic digital skills.

While the scale and consequences of the skills shortage are widely recognised, it continues to grow. So, what’s causing the gap?

In a recent Forbes study, The IT Skills Gap Report, respondents noted the top three causes of the skills gap to be; failure to keep up with the pace of technological change (42pc), lack of training and development opportunities (41pc) and the absence of relevant educational programmes (37pc). Ultimately, there’s a disconnect between the curriculum being taught in schools and the technical skills required in the workplace.

As it stands, the education system is failing to set students up for success. The resources used to teach students about IT and technology are often outdated at the time of teaching and will be redundant by the time the student enters the workforce. So, how can we better prepare students today for the workplace of tomorrow?

Schools and educators need to focus less on teaching students about specific technologies, and more on skills development and problem-solving abilities. Learning about the application of technology is more beneficial in this instance than an in-depth understanding of the technology itself.

The technology industry is rapidly evolving, and the curriculum needs to reflect that. We can’t expect educators to develop a new curriculum every year, but we can adopt a more agile approach, providing specialist teachers with frequent training and working closely with industry experts to ensure students learn about real-life applications of existing and emerging technologies. To effect change, governments, educational institutions and tech industry leaders must work together towards the same goal.

Changes in the UK

The new UK Labour government has already set out plans to mitigate the skills gap. In July, the King’s speech outlined the new government’s legislative agenda for the year, highlighting a welcome focus on skills and further education. Labour seeks to raise educational standards and break down barriers to opportunity by establishing the Skills England Bill, a new partnership with employers at its heart.

Skills England will aim to bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions to meet the skills needs across the country. The organisation will identify the training for which the growth and skills levy will be accessible – an important reform that will give businesses more flexibility to spend levy funds on training for the skills they actually need, which employers have long been calling for.

The UK government also pledged to reform the apprenticeship levy to help fund apprenticeship programmes. In its manifesto, Labour said the reform would go hand in hand with the establishment of Skills England and include the creation of a new, flexible “growth and skills levy” that will better prepare students with the skills that are in demand.

Specific tech skills

There are currently three key areas where demand for skilled workers outstrips supply; AI, cybersecurity and technical debt reduction.

AI adoption has rapidly accelerated over the past 12 months and is only set to continue. While the fundamentals of AI can be taught, it’s much more challenging to teach the transferrable skills needed to address changing domain requirements. Employers should consider an individual’s understanding and capabilities across a range of AI skill categories, for instance machine learning, algorithms, reinforcement learning, structured query language and mathematics. Next-gen technology requires a new framework for skills inclusion, not a CV.

Similarly, cybersecurity candidates need to be assessed against a skills inclusion framework, not a rigid list of credentials. As organisations increasingly rely on digital technologies, the demand for a robust cybersecurity workforce to protect critical networks has rapidly increased. We need to build sustainable cyber talent pipelines within organisations to give people the opportunity to learn and develop skills on the job.

Technical debt – the accumulated cost of maintaining and supporting legacy IT systems – presents a different challenge in that many workers with knowledge of those systems are reaching retirement. Without this legacy system knowledge, large enterprises often struggle to move forward at the pace they need to.

If we are to bridge the technical skills gap, it needs to be a collective effort. Government initiatives like Skills England are an important step in the right direction, but employers have a big part to play, too.

The tech landscape is changing, and so is the way people live and work. People no longer work at the same company for 10, 20 years, working within different areas of the same organisation – they move around to gain experience.

With this in mind, organisations need to make a more proactive effort to skills share, so that employees with in-depth experience of legacy systems share their knowledge with those with experience in emerging technologies and vice versa.

Making a commitment to invest in knowledge and skills development will help organisations to create career advancement opportunities for employees, attract motivated candidates and drive innovation.

By Nick Drouet

Nick Drouet is the chief technical officer at IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl.

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