Firms must plan now for Olympic skill crisis

Managers should take some simple steps to reduce the chance of staff being poached for major government IT projects

IT managers should start planning staff training and retention programmes for the next three years now or risk major skills shortages in 2008 when demand for IT professionals to work on the London Olympics, NHS, ID card initiatives, and other government IT programmes will reach its peak.

That is the recommendation of the annual IT skills trend report from the Institute of Information Systems. It says the combination of the 2012 Olympics and an expected public-sector push to deliver high-profile IT projects ahead of a 2010 general election means demand for IT professionals will increase significantly between 2008 and 2010.

The report warns that "those who do not start planning reskilling and retention programmes for existing staff this spring will therefore face growing problems from spring 2008 onwards".

Report author Philip Virgo said IT chiefs needed to invest in measures to increase staff loyalty during this period and ensure that key staff have clear paths for promotion.

"The big raids will be for project management staff so you need to ensure these staff are content and that means providing clear career paths and training opportunities," Virgo said. "Many firms haven't been doing this because over the past few years they haven't felt the need to, but that is going to change with all these public sector projects."

Tom Hadley of trade body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) agreed the public sector investment would drive up demand for IT staff, adding that the industry as a whole should seize the opportunity to encourage more young people to pursue a career in IT.

"This is a chance to work proactively with schools and universities to get more young people to plug any potential shortfall," Hadley said. "That way one of the legacies of the Olympics could be giving people a life-long career."

The report also says that overall advertised IT salaries have not gone up, but pockets of high demand have been evident in certain regions and technology sectors.

Advertised salaries for project managers and public sector IT staff in particular rose by more than the national average, while demand for Linux skills during 2005 was up 60 percent on the previous year. In contrast, salaries in the media industries and PC helpdesk sector fell.

In separate news, the REC said the European Commission’s decision this month to support calls for temporary agency-based work to be excluded from the Services Directive for free movement of services across the EU may make it harder for European firms to staff cross-border IT projects.

Hadley said the recommendation would prevent firms from using recruitment agencies in one country to find IT contractors to work in another, creating problems for cross-border projects. "It means that if you have reliable contractors from a recruitment agency you can't send them quickly to different countries in the EU," he said.