Skilled coders and developers are in short supply, but remain in high demand amongst the financial and data services industries. Companies that aren’t engaging in digital skills training aren’t only preventing their employees from developing but hampering the digital transformation of their business.
A recent survey undertaken by CapGemini and LinkedIn highlighted the problems that employees face and how far their employers need to go in order to reduce the digital skills gap. It’s important for businesses to adopt a new strategy to create an equal workforce, whilst also attracting young talent to take up coding and developing. There is a myriad of ways to achieve this in the modern workforce.
Respond to change
The first step is understanding that technology is moving forward at lightning speed and that it’s not enough to rely on old and outdated practices.
29% of employees believe that their skills are already redundant or will be in the next 1 to 2 years.
Therefore, it is vital to create an open and progressive environment and welcome new technologies into the workforce. This, in turn, will create a workforce that will work together to bridge the digital skills gap.
Inspire and educate
Indeed, education and training are a necessity for businesses to succeed in a modern world, however, companies should still avoid making this a dull activity. 42% of employees have described their organisation’s training as ‘useless and boring’ and in reaction to the poor training, 52% would prefer to learn through an online course.
It’s important to understand different employees’ needs when setting up training. A one size fits all approach doesn’t always work to maximum effect, so talk to your staff and understand their work balance and preferences to ensure that your staff welcome and engage with your training.
Encourage and fund staff to take up courses and classes to learn new skills.
Outside of work, there are a variety of initiatives created to inspire the younger generation to learn much-needed digital skills. This year, the Chancellor has proposed to invest £84 million to upskill 8,000 secondary school computer science teachers by the end of this parliament.
It’s important for students to be taught technologies early in order to seamlessly move harmoniously together with developments of technologies. This should further incentivise businesses to provide training for staff as soon enough, employers will be out-skilled by the younger generation. Encourage staff to find courses they want to partake in, bring in trainers to the office for a staff training day; these are all simple ways to make sure that upskilling is a hot topic of conversation.
Funding is one of the biggest drawbacks for staff not to take part in training schemes, so put aside some budget. It’s an investment, preventing funding being spent on the search for new staff, as well as increasing company morale.
Maximise employee’s networks when recruiting
If you want the best people to work for your company, you need to invest in the best staff. The most effective way to achieve this is to take advantage of your existing staff. Word of mouth is incredibly valuable for the success of a company, and the best advert for your company is what your staff say. Providing incentives to encourage your staff to spread the word is a great way of achieving this but more importantly, you need to invest in your current staff training to ensure a good word is spread.
55% of job seekers would move to another job if they feel their current employer is not fulfilling their desire to keep their digital skills current
– make sure you are the company they move to.
Ultimately, there is a huge role for businesses to play in bridging the digital skills gap. Once you take the first step in understanding that you need to move with technology, not against it, or trail after it, your staff will take notice. Ensure to inspire and educate your workforce by presenting a variety of training courses and motivate your staff to create awareness of your programs to widen your networks.
From this, your company will make a strong digital mark and strengthen the UK’s reputation as a global technology leader.
You may be interested in…

Why You Need A Holistic View of Integrity Risks Within The Supply Chain
Businesses that support organizations through their supply chain face a growing number of risks. Learn how Decision Intelligence can help.

How to Achieve Growth & Manage Risk with Real-Time Customer Insights
Discover how forward-thinking organizations are deploying new technologies to create a dynamic, contextual understanding of their customers.

The Quantexa Community: Where Customers and Partners Can Learn, Share and Collaborate
Find out more about The Quantexa Community, a global professional network built to bring Quantexa users together.

Quantexa Opens State-of-the-Art Technology & Analytics Hub in Malaga
Quantexa has opened the doors to its Technology & Analytics Hub, set in the very heart of Malaga’s thriving Tech Park. Learn more today.

It’s Time To Upgrade Your Early Warning Signal Systems – Here’s How
Find out why risk managers are turning to CDI technology to provide more accurate early warning signals that anticipate risk changes earlier.

How to Build Additional Context into Your Machine Learning Algorithm
Learn how building additional context into your machine learning algorithm can help your organization detect risks at speed.
Related Solutions

Tax Authorities
Reduce the tax gap, identify fraud and non-compliance, and operate as efficiently as possible with limited resources.

Anti-money laundering
Reveal hidden risks and detect criminal activity faster. Reduce false positives to manage the cost of compliance. And improve investigations to make faster and more consistent decisions at scale.

Customs Agencies & Border Control
Contextual Decision Intelligence enables faster decisions, increased revenue collection and enhanced compliance. The Quantexa platform enables Customs and Border agency teams to analyze data successfully, automate and accelerate decision-making, and achieve improved results.

Fraud
Identify potentially fraudulent activity by looking at people or transactions in isolation. Understand the context surrounding the organizations you do business with to make fast, accurate decisions.

Fraud, Waste & Abuse
Empower your team with the best tools available for today’s challenges to identify and prevent fraud, waste and abuse with contextual decision intelligence software.

Credit Risk
Understand your customers, their business structures and supply chains. Make better lending decisions, faster. And support digital risk transformation.

Customer Intelligence
Generate a complete view of the context around your customers and prospects to build better relationships, reduce attrition and find hidden opportunities.

Revolutionize Your Financial Crime and Fraud Detection

Investigations
Enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of your operational and complex investigations to empower your teams to expose and understand risk faster.

Master Data Management
Connect all data—internal and third party—to create a joined-up, contextual view of all the relationships between your customers and every other domain.

Compliance
See how we help to reduce costs and improve coverage for financial crime compliance.

CDO
See how our platform uses contextual analysis to turn data into a high value asset.

CIO
See how our platform uses financial crime technology to enhance your existing IT ecosystem.

Healthcare
Reduce the tax gap, identify fraud and non-compliance, and operate as efficiently as possible with limited resources.

Contextual Monitoring
Reveal hidden risks and detect criminal activity faster. Reduce false positives to manage the cost of compliance. And improve investigations to make faster and more consistent decisions at scale.

Unified CRM Solution

Know Your Customer
Reduce significant manual effort across onboarding, refreshes and remediation. Automate checks, implement continuous monitoring, and focus on contextual decision making.

Growth and Retention

Contextual Engagement
Generate a complete view of the context around your customers and prospects to build better relationships, reduce attrition and find hidden opportunities.

Data Management
Connect all data—internal and third party—to create a joined-up, contextual view of all the relationships between your customers and every other domain.

Connected Customer View
Generate a complete view of the context around your customers and prospects to build better relationships, reduce attrition and find hidden opportunities.