Too many IT workers not willing to up-skill, says Moneysupermarket.com CIO

Talent management remains number one concern for Tim Jones

There is a level of attrition in the IT workforce because many staff aren't willing to learn new skills, according to the CIO of Moneysupermarket.com, Tim Jones.

Jones told Computing that his number one concern was not vendor management or mobility but talent management, and that this has been compounded by many experienced IT staff who are not willing to up-skill in order to remain relevant to the workforce.

"The problem is 10 years ago you had digital companies competing for digital talent - now every business is, so demand is increasing," he said.

"We are improving the curriculum [in the UK] by reintroducing computer science into schools, and ensuring that it is in higher education too, but it could be eight years before that strategy begins to pay dividends, so you have to look at where the resources are," he stated.

Jones, who was previously CIO at Trader Media Group, has two strategies to deal with this crisis - the first is finding pools of talent with providers who have already invested in talent. He said that Eastern Europe, for example, is full of people with IT ability and good English.

The second strategy, and one that Jones places more importance on, is to train talent in emerging technologies.

"A lot of [the employees] have technology skills that I don't need, and I need new ones. You have to look at which of the workforce is just generally interested in technology and open-minded so that you can send them to training courses and conferences and they will put the time in to learn new skills," he explained.

"You need to ask which ones of your staff are going to pick up skills in testing, development, cloud and big data, and which ones are going to say they have expertise in using Windows Server and don't want to learn anything new.

"You have a level of attrition in your workforce because of those who are not willing to be an expert," he said.

Jones claimed that there were pros and cons with hiring new people, particularly younger staff.

"Many young and enthusiastic people will challenge the incumbents; there is nothing better than a senior development guy looking over their shoulder - all of a sudden they think ‘oh, maybe I need to go to a hackathon or I need to stay at work a bit later'," he suggested.

Jones said that the biggest shortages at Moneysupermarket.com are in CSS3 web development and AngularJS skills.