According to a recent survey by KPMG, skills shortages remain the biggest challenge facing the adoption of digital technologies.
On the issue of talent shortage, the study notes a lack of skilled talent that can play key roles (data scientists, engineers, etc), high cost of purchasing and implementing new systems, lack of skills within an organization to either implement or fully take advantage of new systems.
According to the report, which surveyed 1,000 executives, 2024 will be an “infection point” where 7 in 10 companies will have artificial intelligence, metaverse-y things, quantum computing, virtual or augmented reality, 5G, and edge computing.
Some of the actions that can help companies attract technological talent include establishing a culture of education, training and personal development in IT and boosting the workforce through smart automation.
Based on the recommendations to establish a culture of education, the KPMG authors advise companies to change the approach to hiring and training technology talent.
“Businesses should recalibrate their approach to hiring, training and ‘buying’ specialist talent from the ecosystem. We think reskilling traditional IT professionals is due to play a more prominent role in companies’ talent strategies. For example, a KPMG client recently paired up its internal cloud service professionals with KPMG cloud implementors to gain practical, hands-on experience they could not get from training and certification alone. This enabled the internal team to execute the company’s cloud initiatives,” the KPMG authors suggest.
The authors emphasize the importance of automation, which they believe will help the organization effectively address the problem of skill shortages.
“The next rising star in the technology function could be a bot. By using automation to shoulder the burden of repetitive tasks, existing staff can be upskilled to deliver other knowledge-based skills that are in high demand but short supply. Tapping into this high-potential space is a prime opportunity for businesses to overcome the talent gap and ease the workloads of the human team,” the KPMG authors said.
The sources for this piece include an article in ZDNet.