Over the last decade, businesses in all sectors have evolved to become tech-based, learning how to connect digitally to their customers and stakeholders to stay relevant and efficient.
This means that exploring with and implementing new technologies, such as AI and business intelligence, is necessary to compete and be successful. Yet one of the biggest challenges for business leaders right now is access to the right digital skills.
According to the IT Skills Gap Report 2023 by Forbes Advisor, the majority (93%) of UK businesses acknowledge the existence of an IT skills gap. Organisations now have access to a wide range of tools and technologies but without the right skills, they could miss out on critical business value if they fail to empower their users and people to make the most of this technology.
Some larger businesses have taken the problem into their own hands, developing their own programmes or academies to train and develop the talent they need. Technology companies, who rely on highly skilled talent have also started developing their own academies to train individuals. These academies typically bring the software engineering and technology expertise of their owner organisations to help individuals and businesses to gain much needed specialist technical and behavioural skills and are a promising approach to closing the digital skills gap. They are also grounded in industry, which means relevant, applicable skills for the owner organisations, without the need to re-train.
The increasing skills gap challenge
With advances in technology, digital transformation in business is now more of a continual process, which exacerbates the challenges faced by organisations to find the skills to digitally transform. For tech leaders in organisations, this is a dual-pronged challenge – finding sufficiently experienced tech talent whilst facing tighter budgets and the need to keep day-to-day costs down. Added to this, ensuring that new talent is business-ready can only happen if skills have been developed in the context of relevant applications. The obvious solution for hiring managers, whilst not easy, is to train them up themselves.
For instance, one fast-growing tech region in the UK – Cornwall – has over 1,500 digital organisations employing over 5,000 people. Finding the right talent to grow these businesses will not emerge from the UK’s secondary school and graduates alone – it requires the industry and academia to unite and create relevant training programmes.
Niche tech skills are becoming essential for complex software projects. With requirements evolving for highly technical roles, there’s a greater need for more competency in using digital tools. Technology professionals need to know how to use the tools effectively and valuably to make meaningful decisions around adoption and implementation.
Why tech learning must change
There has been a surge in popularity for Computing A-levels revealed by the Joint Council for Qualifications which saw the biggest increase in take-up in 2023 (16.7%), compared to other subjects. Overall, computing was the 15th most popular subject in 2023, compared to 30th in 2014. But despite these trends, with technology advancing at pace, it’s a challenge to innovate and evolve the curriculum at a practical level.
While ten years ago big data was the buzzword, Generative AI has now moved the agenda onto new technologies. When it comes to the classic three-year degree course, our current model is flawed. Graduates come out with broad technology training but then need top-up specialist training to do a job effectively. It is also a very cumbersome and expensive way of training people. Ultimately, the UK needs to move from a waterfall approach to a brand new school curriculum that teaches the business of software, data and cybersecurity, but this won’t happen overnight.
The role of a digital academy
In creating links between educational institutions and a hub of tech and digital sector businesses, via digital academies, this can vastly improve how training opportunities can be constructed.
Whether an organisation is looking to make digital transformation real and upskill on the tools and technology available, or a person wants to career switch into software development, digital academies can support these skilling or upskilling programmes through training on a range of digital tools.
An effective digital academy is one with technical experts in software delivery that design, deliver and assess the courses. An academy such as Headforwards Digital Academy can intensively train a person in deep software engineering, taking them from no-coding knowledge to becoming a junior software developer in as little as 16 weeks.
These industry-led tech training programmes are a more agile and nimble response to education, as they are validated by employers and receive so much support. They also provide a more holistic learning environment, giving the opportunity for experienced workers to re-train through industry, rather than pushing mature learners back to college or university.
Industry and academia must collaborate to solve the skills gap
A new business-ready approach to tech education will work towards solving the sector’s issue with talent development. It can harness the expertise of software engineering and technology specialists to help individuals and organisations gain both the technical skills and mindset shift they need to make the most of technology.
To be most effective, the training for roles such as programmers, developers, and software engineers must be closely linked with industry. The starting point must be to work out what employers’ need and work back from there.
The greatest challenge for training is to keep up with technology itself, advancing tech training in line with tech advancement. CIOs are generally good at knowing the skills they want, and the emergence of digital academies is a strong sign of progress. It is worth keeping an eye out for technology companies that are developing academies, as the home-grown, industry developed talent could offer them a stronger pipeline of skill for the digital future.
About the Author
Toby Parkins is Co-Founder and Group CEO at Headforwards. Headforwards is a leading digital partner. We use our DNA in engineering excellence to guide and deliver transformations for our clients through forward-thinking consultancy and high-quality software solutions tailored to their requirements. Our high performing Agile teams deliver software, application and data engineering and thought leadership to a global client base. We are the trusted partner of clients in sectors spanning local authority, insurance, financial services, global communications and health. Since our inception more than 13 years ago, we have delivered value for over 120 different clients with one of the lowest attrition rates in the market. We have amassed significant expertise and knowledge which stands us out as experts in both strategy and delivery having taken numerous transformation projects through to completion and beyond.
