Resourcing the Technology Team

Author: Jeoung Oh

This year’s 2019 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO survey, the largest IT leadership survey in the world, shows that skills shortages are at an all-time high since 2008. These shortages can’t fail to act as a bottleneck to growth.  This year’s survey also showed how data analytics, cyber security, AI and transformation are driving technology investment; that demand is affecting the employment market.  Skills in these areas are becoming scarce.

KPMG

The CIO survey suggest that the skills shortage is a tale of two types of organizations.  Younger and smaller organizations are less likely to have a skills shortage older and larger ones more likely.  Larger organizations, ones with budgets over $250m, also appear to be the least able to retain their staff for the duration that they would like: only 26 percent retain key staff within their technology talent compared with 44 percent of small organizations with budgets of under $50m.  This poses a particular problem when large organizations are most likely to benefit from the transformation and do not have the skills to support their plans.

Our research tells us that technology professionals value innovative projects and learning new skills above anything else (including salary and job security), and smaller organizations seem to offer this better. This is despite larger, more established enterprises often having the advantage of a well-known brand and international career opportunities.  As the average life span of an organization declines as markets rapidly evolve, the advantage of heritage and scale for large organizations appears to be declining.

To read the full findings from the CIO Survey 2019 report and understand how digital leaders are outpacing their competitors in delivering real business results, please click here.