According to a survey conducted by Gartner, 81% of the CIOs of large enterprises (LE) expect to boost their IT team in 2023. This information comes as a ray of hope amidst the mass layoffs, the unstable economy and the threat of AI replacing people in their jobs.
The booming digital industry is expected to continue growing for a long time. And while technological advancements like automation and AI-augmented teams are being adopted to enhance the IT workforce, 56 % of the work is still done by full-time IT employees.
“Attracting and retaining technology talent remain critical areas of concern for CIOs,” said Jose Ramirez, Sr Principal Analyst at Gartner.
“Even with advances in AI, Gartner predicts that the global job impact will be neutral in the next several years due to enterprise adoption lags, implementation times and learning curves.”
While digitization is spreading rapidly through every aspect of our lives including the workspace, the demand for services surpasses its supply by a huge margin and companies still need time to bridge this gap.
“Enterprises have undertaken various digital initiatives over the past two years, with operational excellence and customer or citizen experience being the most popular,” said Ramirez.
“Still, these initiatives often do not meet enterprise needs quickly enough. This reliance on FTEs to meet the demands of digital transformation explain why LE CIOs plan to increase IT headcount in 2023.”
A robust team of IT professionals is the need of the hour for all companies, however, the current state of the market acts as an impediment to the fulfillment of this goal. According to the survey, LE CIOs are facing issues like slow hiring, a decrease in the overall IT budget, freeze hiring for roles, etc.
As a result, CIOs are thinking out of the box to meet their IT talent needs.
CIOs of LE are prioritizing cybersecurity, cloud platforms, and customer/user experience as the most crucial skills. A majority of the CIOs intend to invest in training programmes to enhance and upgrade the skills of their existing IT team, to ensure it possesses the necessary roles, capacities, and skills to achieve the objectives of the company. Additionally, 46% of CIOs plan to establish fusion teams, while an equal percentage aims to automate workflows to free up time for IT professionals.
“Recruiting the right IT expertise takes time and planning, especially for skills in architecture, cybersecurity, cloud computing and agile software development,” said Ramirez. “Ensure that IT has relevant roles, skills and capacity to meet enterprise objectives. This may require embracing a blended workforce model of IT and business domain roles.”
The gap in technical skills is a critical issue that is faced by organizations all over the world. According to statistics, the main gap in technical skills is faced by IT technicians and is predicted to remain virtually the same in 2025. The shift to hybrid and remote work situations along with heavy dependency on technology is making the rift wider than ever before. This rift needs to be tackled at the earliest.
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