TALKING

CIOs and senior managers striving to keep their modernisation efforts on track must find a way to retain , engage and transition the existing workforce .

a 40 % decline in pupils taking ICT subjects at school . Over a quarter of the employers they spoke to required the majority of their workforce to have advanced digital skills , but despite 88 % of young people recognising that these skills were important , only 18 % felt they had what employers needed .

Running to keep up

Speed of change is also having an impact on organisations . The pandemic has accelerated digitisation by as much as five years as CIOs and CTOs have been forced to rapidly deploy technology that enables them to support remote workers and keep up with the dramatic switch by customers to online channels .

This is straightforward for tech companies such as Google or Facebook , which have been built from the ground up to be agile , but many long-standing organisations , such as banks or government agencies , were not built to move this quickly . The result is a tremendous strain on resources , testing IT teams that were already struggling with Digital Transformation , and which are more accustomed to 10-year – not one-year – technology evolution cycles .

Companies have choices . They can outsource to thirdparties , or they can set up an entirely new IT organisation from scratch , built to be light on its feet using modern cloud and mobile technologies as its base . This means they can abandon the transition process completely . The other way is to find an improved solution for managing the resources that they have .

Managing resources more effectively

Transformation demands a cultural shift to the same degree that it demands a technological shift and preparing the workforce is a huge part of it . This is where CIOs have such an important part to play in setting out realistic expectations and a clear path for how employees ’ working lives will change for the good .

It ’ s understandable that existing employees more accustomed to legacy equipment will be resistant to change . In many cases , they are already overburdened . Network engineers , for example , are being dragged away from their core roles by the necessity to oversee regulation and compliance , monitor risk assessments , or fill in forms . The clear message to them , however , is that Digital Transformation has the power to automate these processes and in doing so , allows them to concentrate on the job they were hired to do , be more productive and gain more satisfaction .

Companies should bring their highly experienced people along for the transformation journey , not least because they have hands-on knowledge of how system functionality has evolved over the years to meet changing corporate requirements . Given that the market is not rich in resources and it can take eight or nine months to fill a tech role , it makes good business sense to maximise the value of their human capital .

It will certainly be important to outline a career path that acknowledges worker ’ s existing abilities and expertise , but offers them more . Training and opportunities to learn additional technical skills such as working with Java applications , new IT disciplines , or refactored applications is essential .

Build on what you have

It ’ s not easy for CIOs to manage Digital Transformation in traditional companies where the culture tends not to tolerate change . Devising the right strategy for workforce management during this time , however , could mean garnering an army of supportive , engaged and motivated employees for whom innovation means opportunity , not redundancy . This must be a better prospect for companies than losing valued workers who are still needed to run core systems , allowing the organisation the time it needs to look for available digital talent , without running the risk of potential damage to customer relationships , revenue and reputation if systems fail . p

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