81% organisations experiencing a shortage in skilled tech workers

81 per cent of organisations are experiencing a shortage in skilled tech workers, an EY and iMocha report on skill transformation revealed on Thursday.

An emphasis on skills transformation has taken center stage for organisations seeking continued momentum through their post-pandemic recovery. The survey was conducted with 50 business and human resources (HR) from a range of industries including independent software vendors (ISVs) (16 per cent), Information Technology enabled Services (IT/ITeS) (41 per cent), BFSI (29 per cent), and Telecom (9 per cent). 28 per cent of these companies opined that the tech skills transformation of about 35 per cent of their teams would become critical to retain a competitive edge by 2025.

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However, merely 19 per cent of the organisations reported having established a skill taxonomy, while 43 per cent had conducted skill benchmarking at the employee level, said the report that talked about how technology skills are increasingly integrating across all job roles, beyond traditional IT roles.

“Job roles and skill needs are changing faster than ever. The shelf life of skills has become 3-5 years, which was 20 years earlier,” said Amit D Mishra, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, iMocha. The adoption of skill taxonomy and benchmarking is a clear indicator that the increasing complexity of tech skills is necessitating leaders to reconstruct their talent acquisition, development, and management strategies, he added.

The shortage of future tech skills is expected to arise from the high demand for application developers and business app users, as indicated by 76 per cent and 62 per cent of the surveyed organisations, respectively. The shortage of application development skills, however, is higher in the US and Europe compared to India.

“Companies have laid off employees not only due to macroeconomic factors and recessionary fears but because they are testing how technology will work for them,” noted Mishra. He added that there might be some mass-scale hiring in the services sector in a couple of quarters. However, for companies investing in the future, it might take some tim to analyse what jobs generative AI will touch.

“Even those organisations that are laying off employees, are hiring for new-age tech skills,” Alpana Dutta, Partner, People Advisory Services, EY India added.

The global tech talent pool is estimated to have over 26 million people with 65 per cent in software engineering roles followed by 27 per cent in IT and 8 per cent in business app-related roles. India is amongst the leading tech talent markets, with a market share of 16 per cent, at par with Europe’s 16 per cent and the USA’s 20 per cent.

Going forward, while there is a small proportion of jobs that will get redundant, a significant proportion will be transformed, and new jobs (that didn't exist 5 years ago) will be created with the latest technology like AI and ChatGPT, the panel attested.