Jul 3, 2024
The IT skills gap, explained
With rapid technological advances, it’s increasingly hard to find IT workers for certain specialized tasks. Here’s some tips for navigating this challenge.
Having trouble finding the right people for your IT team? If so, you’re not the only one. According to one recent report, 96% of surveyed businesses said they were seeing a gap in IT skills.
Simply put, this means it’s taking longer and longer to find workers able to carry out certain IT roles. All of which presents a serious problem for driving growth in your business. Not to mention digital transformation...
In this article, we’ll outline what the skills gap looks like in IT, why it’s happening, and give you some tips for navigating the problem and keeping your business moving forward.
In this article:
What is the IT skills gap?
At its simplest, the IT skills gap means there’s a difference between the skills that employees need and the skills of available workers. In real terms, this means that it’s hard to fill jobs in the IT sector. This in turn negatively impacts productivity in companies all over the world.
According to a recent study, 64% of business leaders think that IT candidates lack the necessary skills or experience. 56% feel there’s an overall shortage of skilled talent. But what exactly is causing this?
Of course, there’s not one simple answer to this question, but rather lots of contributing factors. One is rapid technological development. And when it comes to AI (artificial intelligence), skills simply cannot keep up. The World Economic Forum predicts that demand for AI and machine learning experts will grow by 40%, or 1 million jobs — and that’s just in the next four years!
Evolving business models are also playing a contributing role. Take, for example, the rise of remote and hybrid working. This has come with an explosion in the need for certain technical skills. Things like cloud service management and security, remote infrastructure management, virtual collaboration tools, and cybersecurity.
The way we teach IT skills plays isn’t helping the skills gap, either. For one thing, the content of programs isn’t keeping up with technological development. Particularly in fields like AI and cybersecurity.
Additionally, students often leave education with little practical experience or soft skills. When technology is changing so fast, these more hard-to-teach characteristics are growing increasingly important.
Lastly, rising education costs globally mean many people — and particularly those already underrepresented in tech — cannot gain the skills needed to close the so-called digital divide. For that reason, making IT open and inclusive to all can play a decisive role in solving the IT skills gap.
The impact of the IT skills shortage
The skills gap is bad news for basically everyone working in IT. We talked to one of our HR team, Zlatozara Hristova, based in Berlin. In her experience, it has been a particular challenge when it comes to “niche market segments and specific skills” like AI and AR. But what does this look like?
Well, say you’re an IT company experiencing a skills gap. As a result, you don’t have enough employees trained to do certain tasks — remote onboarding, for example. Because there are not enough of these employees, this will slow productivity in general across the company.
Due to increased pressure, the work mightn’t be up to the usual standard, either. This often means that it will have to be redone, further impacting productivity.
A lack of skilled workers will also make it harder to develop new ideas and improvements. And if a company isn't doing this, it may not compete well with other, more innovative companies. This makes it tough for businesses to grow and succeed in a fast-moving industry like IT.
For IT employees, the skills gap often translates to more work for less people, which in turn leads to decreased job satisfaction and burnout. All of which turns into another huge problem for employers: staff retention. Which — you guessed it — only further compounds the IT skills gap.
As Zlatozara notes, the IT skills gap is especially challenging when it comes to productivity and innovation. But at TeamViewer, she says, it “pushes us in exploring innovative ways in attracting the needed talent and penetrating the talent markets for specialized skills for which we are hunting.”
So, while it can seem like an uphill struggle sometimes, there are reliable strategies for tackling the IT skills gap. Let’s look at some of these now.
Bridging the gap: Strategies and solutions for the IT skills gap
It’s important to point out that it’s not all doom and gloom. There are plenty of tangible strategies out there for tackling the IT skills gap. And these will help ensure your company attracts and retains talent while staying productive at the same time.
Education and training
Supporting employee development is an effective way of tackling the IT skills gap. By helping them to fill gaps in knowledge in your company, you will reduce the need for additional employees.
Investing in staff training and continuous learning will also help with retention. Particularly with younger employees, access to training is a key factor in whether they stay with an employer or not.
In fact, according to Forbes, a staggering 70% of employees would think about leaving their current job for another organization for more training opportunities. And, according to the same source, 86% of millennials would stay at their current job if their employer offered it. So, it makes sense to support their training — before they go and innovate elsewhere!
Training was also Zlatozara’s top tip for countering the skills gap. “Stay up to date with the market trends and get informed about their possible impact on the business,” she recommended, “be prepared to introduce trainings for your workforce in the relevant new areas and keep monitoring the status quo.”
Technology solutions
Remote technologies like TeamViewer can also be very useful in managing the IT skills gap. Why? Because they allow experts to help and train others remotely. As our CCO Pete Turner put it in a recent article, with them experienced professionals can connect to and fix problems on computers from anywhere in the world.
This means they can show less experienced staff how to solve issues without having to travel. It also helps share valuable tech skills and knowledge quickly and efficiently. This way, IT teams become more skilled and effective, and their companies can stay competitive and up to date.
Collaboration between industry and academia
Partnerships between universities and schools and industry make a lot of sense. By aligning educational curricula with real-world industry requirements, students will gain relevant and up-to-date skills. These collaborations can facilitate internships, co-op programs, and guest lectures from industry professionals, giving students practical experience and networking opportunities.
At the same time, joint research initiatives help academic institutions to stay current with technological advancements and industry needs. This enhances the relevance of academic training to current and future challenges in the IT sector.
At TeamViewer, for example, we’ve been using include organizing hackathons in particular skills gap areas. At the same time, we're participating in strategic tech events to target people with an interest in emerging technologies.
Our Director of Software Development Björn Krüger, based at our HQ in Göppingen, also pointed out that cultural differences in education can also contribute to the IT skills gap. In Germany, for example, it’s still not typical for people of all genders to study IT, mathematics, or engineering – while in India, for example, it's totally normal.
More than anything, this requires a cultural shift to help people realize IT’s fundamental value to daily life. As Björn put it: “You can't go into a parking lot without IT. You can't go into anything else without IT, and people need to know that and how that works.”
So, while emphasizing the value of IT, we also need to tell young people that it’s open to them. And this work can start early! Most recently, we were proud to partner with schools on a coding challenge, the TeamViewer Cyber Robotics Competition. This gave more than 750 children in Germany and the US the chance to explore the exciting world of coding and robotics.
Rethink skills
What skills are necessary to do a particular role? One suggestion is to think about your hiring practices and move towards a more skill-based model. This can both open the role to more talent and reduce bias by objectively accessing skills.
Zlatozara makes a similar recommendation. At TeamViewer, skills-based assessment methods and behavioral interviewing practices have been key to tackling the IT skills gap. In the long term, these can have a huge impact on filling roles with more specialized skill sets.
In fact, according to a recent McKinsey study, organizations that realign HR processes to match skill needs can boost employee engagement by 50%, lower training and development costs by 50%, and boost productivity by 40%.
Make it inclusive
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives can also play an important role in encouraging skills development and help bridge the IT skills gap. These might include targeted scholarships and internships for underrepresented groups in technology.
One example here is TeamViewer’s recent SheSportTech campaign, created in partnership with our sports partners Manchester United and Mercedes-AMG. Created with the aim of getting more women in sports technology, the initiative has received hundreds of applications so far. But most importantly, it has helped reiterate that tech is a place for women.
Another strategy is to diversify outreach strategies. This can take many forms, including social media. Zlatozara recommends using it to “investigate the available talent pool, to engage with passive talent and spread the word about the brand, the organization and available opportunities.”
Read more: Why your company benefits from a diverse workforce
Summary
Hopefully at this point you’ll be feeling a little less overwhelmed by the IT skills gap. With rapid developments in technology, it’s all but impossible for our skills to keep pace. But that’s not to say that you can’t still maintain productivity in your business.
With some creative thinking and commitment, you can work against the IT skills gap. You can do this by helping your employees to learn new skills on the job and keeping a more open mind when it comes to hiring. After all, it’s pretty much impossible to find a candidate who’s an expert on a technology that was just released. More important is the flexibility and willingness to learn.
Lastly, you can help to make IT more inclusive. By hiring a more diverse workforce, you will show that IT is a place for everyone. The effect? More people in IT, more innovation, and ultimately, more productivity and — YES — growth for your business.
Want to see what TeamViewer can do for your business?
Our solutions can support remote work and training and help counter the IT skills gap.