Strategies for dealing with the enterprise technology skills crisis

Australia faces a technology skills crisis. Businesses around the world are struggling to find the people they need for key roles in their IT departments in nearly every discipline, from data analytics to cloud computing to cybersecurity.

A February 2021 report by RMIT Online with Deloitte Access Economics claimed that Australia needs 156,000 new technology workers, with 87% of jobs requiring digital skills. In addition, more than half of Australian professionals Respondents reported little to no understanding of coding, blockchain, AI, and data visualization.

The COVID pandemic has made matters worse as global lockdowns and international travel restrictions have prevented companies operating in Australia from flying in staff from overseas.

Technology leaders met in recent roundtables in Sydney and Melbourne to discuss how they are tackling the tech skills crisis. The discussions were sponsored by Pluralsight.

The ongoing struggle for talent is affecting companies across the technology industry, said Josephine Lanzarone, vice president of marketing, Asia-Pacific at Pluralsight.

“This is being driven in part by the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns, and exacerbated by demand from industries such as financial services, manufacturing, education and many others that are actively seeking to bring technical capabilities into their organizations to drive efficiency and growth.

“As demand for skills spreads across industries globally, Australia has not kept pace, allowing those with the skills to receive a premium for their experience,” says Lanzarone.

Additionally, she says, technology is not a skill that is learned once to achieve mastery.

“Instead, technology is constantly evolving, and new skills and knowledge need to be acquired each month to allow professionals to keep up with the latest trends.

“In this regard, continuous learning is a must and finding people who are committed to this journey and will continue to refresh their skills and knowledge is the second layer of filtering that needs to be done for those working on the frontier of it what is possible with technology,” she says.

Aidan Coleman, chief technology officer at Scentre Group, says the mall organization is finding the right technology people, but the skills crunch has certainly caused the organization to step up its recruitment efforts and make smarter use of networks and partners.

“In some cases, finding top talent takes longer and we really focus on making sure there is a good fit between a candidate’s personal and professional aspirations and the organization’s purpose and growth aspirations.

“We are fortunate to be able to present candidates with industry-leading technology in a fantastic company culture and with high levels of team commitment,” he says.

Meanwhile, Peter Smith, Mission Australia’s chief information officer, says the nonprofit is struggling to find the right technology staff. Attracting cybersecurity talent is a key area, but there are “general challenges in finding people with the right mindset, a trainable mindset, and the right values,” he says.

“As an organization we cannot just sit back and let things move forward – we need to take a very proactive and multi-faceted approach to ensure we attract the right people to support our work. So we’ve been working hard to rethink how we’re going to approach this and how we’re going to do it within demanding budget parameters.”

Mission Australia really can’t compete on the basis of salary and ability to provide more tangible staff development support, Smith says, but it can compete on a more holistic approach to recruiting.

“Purpose is a powerful motivator for many, but it is not always enough. That’s why we’ve done a lot of work to understand motivators and work on how we can improve various elements to improve our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). We’re not where we want to be yet, but we’re actively working to ensure we address as many key elements as possible to create the best possible EVP,” he says.

Liam Mallett, chief operating officer of technology company Doddle, says it’s a very competitive marketplace for talent, with longer lead times to hire and higher compensation opportunities for candidates.

He says the company is having the biggest trouble finding product managers and back- and front-end developers, and needs to use non-monetary elements to deliver a compelling package like highly flexible working and full-time work-from-home arrangements to offer.

A senior IT manager says one of the biggest problems is retaining existing employees who just want to work from home.

“This upsets other team members who feel that this person has been singled out for special treatment. Do we insist that they come on site at least once a week and if they are not willing, do we look for new talent? That’s all very well, but easier said than done. This person is outstanding and an essential resource, so it’s a real dilemma,” he says.

Future-proof your skills

Organizations looking to future-proof their skills program must continually expand their skills base in line with their goals, says Pluralsight’s Lanzarone.

She says it is crucial to work with a skills provider that supports foundational skills in an organization and assess them against the latest technological developments.

“The fundamental element is creating an engineering culture that supports continuous and ongoing learning to increase the technology workforce’s competition for talent. Employers compete with companies around the world for the best talent. Giving employees the opportunity to stay at the forefront of their field while working on interesting projects is critical to employee retention,” she says.

Mission Australia’s Smith says his organization is future-proofing its skills by embracing an agile learning mentality and using platforms to support training and development.

“We’re working to inculcate this across the technology team, but it’s still early days,” he says.

Scentre Group’s Coleman says the company is focusing on four things to future-proof its skill base. First, Scentre is clear on a three- to five-year technology strategy and the decisions it makes to buy, build, or integrate technology products and services.

Second, it has created a “competency matrix” required now and in the future, along with an overview of the best approach to sourcing and pipeline development.

“Third, we prioritize study and development time, utilize online learning platforms and have weekly ‘back time’ to focus on personal and professional growth and well-being. Finally, we integrate and track progress as part of a quarterly Whole of Self scorecard,” he says.

Doddle’s Mallett adds that his organization invests in employees to develop their skills.

“We are also committed to expanding local hiring practices so that we are not as impacted by events in specific regions. Most of our developers were in Ukraine,” he says.

Impart skills and move talents

Identifying transferable skills and mapping them to future career paths to support talent mobility within an organization appears to be one of the most effective ways to challenge and motivate people, even more than market-based wage adjustments.

Doddle’s Mallett says Mission Australia invests in staff not only for hard skills but also for soft skills.

“With a growing technology team, we don’t want to end up with great technologists who have poor people management skills. Putting people in roles they don’t have the skills for can create even more growing pains,” he says.

To avoid this, Doddle has provided training paths to help employees transition into roles and expand their leadership, technology and soft skills abilities, he says.

“That way, people can choose which direction they want to go in – sometimes it’s more common technical paths like cloud or security. In other cases, it might be about building emotional intelligence skills to lead a team,” he said.

Mission Australia’s Smith admits that the organization’s IT team did not identify and map capabilities well.

“This has been evident in some of our work, and we’re working to redefine roles and some of the skills and components required by those roles so that we can define those paths more clearly, while still retaining some agility and flexibility,” he says.