The tech talent shortage has CIOs scrambling to ensure that employees brush up on the latest skills and technologies that facilitate business agility. But the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the need to have adaptable, flexible staff willing to learn new skills in critical domains such as cloud software, machine learning and cybersecurity.
Indeed, 72% of 3,670 senior corporate executives identified “the ability of their people to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles” as the No. 1 item to navigate future disruptions, according to Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human Capital Trends report. Yet only 17% of those executives describe their workers as ready to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles, underscoring a big disconnect between leaders’ priorities and the reality of how their organizations support workforce development.
The acceleration of digital business imperatives means CIOs must do something different to get a different result. The following is a look at how several IT leaders are approaching this issue to create more productive, agile IT workforces.
Instilling a cloud-ready culture
TransUnion has hired hundreds of “cloud-native” engineers fluent in software from the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. But to cultivate the skills required to build out and manage a hybrid cloud, the credit reporting software maker hired a third-party training provider to help employees earn cloud certifications, which will enable them to better modernize applications for cloud platforms and build fully automated CI/CD pipelines as part of the company’s DevSecOps push, according to Abhi Dhar, TransUnion’s chief information and technology officer.
