Industry urged to support skills drive

The subject of IT skills shortages was back in the news last month as government-backed body E-skills UK launched a Sector Skills Agreement (SSA) for IT. Experts welcomed the SSA action plan, which includes a series of new training schemes to increase numbers of IT graduates, but they also warned that the skills gap is likely to widen without greater investment in training from the private sector.

Speaking at the launch of the SSA, skills minister Phil Hope called for more private sector involvement in new schemes, which include a university course providing a mix of technical and business skills; and a national roll out of Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) designed to encourage more women into IT.

But experts warned firms cannot rely on public sector schemes to solve the skills shortage, particularly when initiatives such as CC4G are unlikely to have any impact on the workforce for almost a decade.

E-skills UK research shows employers are already suffering a skills shortage – over a third of firms with IT vacancies find the positions hard to fill and 42 percent of these claim this is harming their operations. Employers also reported that almost two-fifths of staff lack everyday IT skills, such as the ability to use word processing and database apps.

According to E-skills UK, up to 179,000 new entrants are needed for the IT sector each year to replace an aging workforce, but only 8,800 new graduates entered the IT workforce in 2002 and the numbers have fallen since, especially among women.

The new university course is designed to create 1,000 new graduates a year, but this still leaves a massive shortfall. And even if the CC4G scheme reverses IT’s decades-long image problem it is fanciful to expect all the 150,000 girls involved will become IT professionals.

“[The SSA] is a step in the right direction,” commented Jane Lewis of networking giant Cisco. “But we must encourage students to see that learning must not stop at the end of a course. People must be being trained all the time.”

One cost-effective way Cisco has found to improve training is to work with further education institutions. Ian Green of Wigan and Leigh College said the view that local colleges are out of touch with business needs is wrong and added that colleges offered better value than private training firms. “We’ve been involved in vendor provisioning for six years and are now flexible enough to cater for evolving business needs,” he said.

Matthew Poyiadgi of IT trade group Comptia agreed firms must invest more in IT training and support public sector efforts. “We must dispel the myth that if you train someone and they leave the investment is lost,” he added. “Studies show that if you develop staff they stay. [And training] reduces helpdesk calls, increases productivity and reduces turnover of staff.”