80% Firms Worldwide Face Shortage Of Workforce With Apt Tech Skills: Study

At least 80 per cent of companies face a shortage of employees skilled in "power user or developer" technology, said an international report on Friday, highlighting what is needed in job roles.

Almost one in every three companies, of 28 per cent of those surveyed, said that they need to revamp technology skills of one-third of their talent base in 2025 to stay competitive, according to the "Tech skills transformation - Navigating the future of work in 2025 and beyond" report released by professional services organisation Ernst & Young (EY) and skills intelligence platform iMocha.

Out of the 50 companies surveyed, 75 per cent of UK/EU respondents stated that there is a tech-skills gap in business app user roles. As many as 60 per cent of respondents in India and 50 per cent in the US acknowledged the gap.

A shortage of technology skills is expected to arise from high demand for two roles: application developers and business app users.

India is expected to be in a good position to tackle the shortage. The study said the country accounts for 16 per cent of the top tech talent market globally. It is at par with Europe which also has 16 per cent of the top tech talent. The USA accounts for 20 per cent of the market share.

As many as 62 per cent of international companies said that they would need to revamp the tech skills of 5-15 per cent of their workforce by 2025.

"It is clearly evident that technology skills are seen as valuable across job roles, functions, and industries. With the increasing usage of different tools, the complexity of skills needed across various functional areas (software engineering, IT, and business application power user) is also increasing. Hence it is not surprising that 62 per cent of employers believe that 5-15 per cent of their talent base will require skills transformation in the next 2-3 years, with 33 per cent of employers estimating that 15-35 per cent of their talent base will require this upgrade," said Alpana Dutta, partner of People Advisory Services at EY India.

The report said that just 19 per cent of the companies reported having established a skill taxonomy, while 43 per cent had conducted skill benchmarking at the employee level. A skills taxonomy is a list of the skills that a business makes which would help it and its employees to meet the need of the industry.