AI accelerating disruption leads to IT talent shortage, shows survey

With AI accelerating disruption at an unprecedented pace, IT departments are facing a talent shortage, as one in three IT leaders surveyed flagged difficulty in finding qualified talent.

It also stated that the current scenario presents a missed opportunity for strengthening business outcomes and talent retention.

Ed-tech company Skillsoft in its '2023 IT Skills and Salary Survey' revealed challenges such as skills gaps, talent shortages, and technology transformation are impacting IT departments, with one in three IT leaders facing difficulty in finding qualified talent.

"With AI accelerating disruption at an unprecedented pace, the need for workforce training has never been more obvious and consequential. Organisations are at a critical point where they need to be deliberate and proactive about building skills and capabilities -- especially related to AI -- or risk falling behind in the coming year," Skillsoft Chief Information Officer Orla Daly said.

Skillsoft's '2023 IT Skills and Salary Survey' is based on inputs from more than 5,700 global IT professionals, including leaders and staff members.

It said that 82 per cent of IT professionals said training is extremely or very important to their careers and a lack of development was the top factor that drove respondents to change employers in the last year.

Hard or technical skills have traditionally been prioritised in the IT industry, while soft or power skills can fall by the wayside despite being essential for adapting and augmenting transformative technologies, especially GenAI, the survey noted.

IT professionals rank team communication (40 per cent), interpersonal communication (21 per cent), and emotional intelligence (13 per cent) as the three most important skills for IT leaders to have.

However, just 6 per cent of IT leaders said leadership skills will be a key area of investment moving forward, and only 7 per cent said the same about power skills, it added.

With 72 per cent of IT leaders ranking their existing teams' leadership skills as medium to low, there is a significant gap between training needs and priorities in this critical area, according to the survey.

This presents a major opportunity for businesses to build well-rounded IT professionals by providing leadership training as a differentiator to drive greater innovation, growth, and efficiencies, it said.