Digital skills development and tech intensity at the heart of the future of work

The future is here, and it is undoubtedly digital. The fact that more than 90 percent of South African businesses are engaged in some form of digital transformation bears testament to this. But this reality means that business leaders need to place the relentless pursuit of digital innovation at the centre of everything they do – which requires deeper and more complex digital skills.

At Microsoft, we’ve given this constant drive for digital innovation a name: ‘tech intensity’. It is the marrying of a digitally driven mindset with business processes to reward the development and scaling of digital capabilities.

Achieving tech intensity means creating end-to-end digital feedback loops, tearing down data silos and unleashing information flows to trigger insights and predictions, automated workflows and intelligent services. Only by applying tech intensity, will the workforces of today and tomorrow be able to harness the power of these new technologies.

However, the truth is that tech intensity is impossible without the right set of digital skills. Digital skills form the backbone of modern enterprises – a fact revealed unequivocally in our Future of Work Skills research, which we commissioned the IDC to carry out.

The good news is that the report shows that the majority of South African businesses recognise just how vital digital skills are and some are even already starting to invest in upskilling their current employees to ensure they are equipped to meet future needs as part of their digital transformation journeys. That means training and equipping them with the most in-demand skills, including security and data protection specialists, data analysts, IT service managers and cloud computing specialists.

The bad news is that there is a gap between the digital skills that the country needs and the skills that it is currently equipped with. And the demand for these types of skills is only going to keep on growing: 64 percent of businesses expect to see an increase in positions that require deep technology skills over the next two to three years. 

But as this demand grows, so too does the skills gap as the pipeline of talent coming from academic institutions and industry or professional associations simply isn’t adequate to meet business needs. This points to an ever-increasing need to intensify investment in developing digital skills, as well as in reskilling or upskilling current staff to meet future needs.

Building enough skills to make a real and noticeable difference and truly embrace tech intensity can only happen with a collective effort across industries and both the public and private sectors using a combination of partnerships, trainings, online classrooms and real-world experiences.

Within the context of striving for tech intensity, businesses will need to prioritise:

?      Growing their own skills and capabilities: Jobs are changing, and the skills required for any job continue to evolve, with the average life span for a skill now being less than five years. This means organisations need to grow critical skills and capabilities through upskilling and reskilling, among other things.

?      Utilising IT professionals as change agents: More and more IT professionals are acting as change agents, supporting both current and emerging technologies, so they can play a critical role in driving digital skills development.

?      Working more closely with customers and partners: Tech intensity means that for our customers to be competitive, drive innovation and be more productive, they also need the skills to deliver. This means collaborating to ensure organisations have the right digital skills in place.

?      Re-thinking how we skill future generations: This is not just in ways that will immediately help to fill the existing technical skills gap, but in pushing businesses to rethink how to skill for future jobs that don’t even exist today. Consider this: nearly 75 percent of students today will do jobs that do not currently exist, so skilling for future generations is about creating professionals equipped with the skills needed to harness digital innovation.

For more on the results of the study click here: Findings Report