Strategies to bridge the technical skills divide

Organisations around the world – including in South Africa – face significant recruitment challenges, chasing the best technical talent available from a limited resource pool.

SoftwareOne’s Cloud Skills Report, reporting research conducted in 2023, shows that this global shortage is impacting 98% of organisations, with delays in critical projects and missed financial targets due to the lack of cloud skills. This year,  SoftwareOne sponsored the Institute of IT Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) Skills Report.  The report highlights how the skills shortage in South Africa is inhibiting the country’s ability to leverage its digital economy, which is essential for economic growth and reducing unemployment. This, in turn, has real cost implications in opportunities, revenue and competitivity lost.

Although skills deficits differ from country to country, the issues remain the same. Essentially, there is a lag between the supply in the number of graduates qualifying in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects, and the demand from business. Globally, 35% of graduates are from STEM-related subjects, while in South Africa the situation is more critical with only 13% of students gaining degrees in related fields. These deficiencies in the formal education system create a barrier to bridging the digital skills gap. Add to this the ‘revolving door’ approach to job opportunities, where many young, qualified people chase the same set of the most lucrative and challenging roles, and the gap becomes larger.

Given the speed with which technology is moving in its adoption and application in the workplace, a graduate who leaves an institute of higher learning with a degree earned over three or four years will soon find their academic learning obsolete. The IITPSA survey underscores the importance of academia-industry partnerships in addressing the ICT skills gap, highlighting that 24% of respondents advocate for additional graduate and professional training programs.  This emphasises the need for collaboration between educational institutions and industry to align curricula with evolving technological demands. To address skills gaps that widen over time, companies need to adopt a mindset of continuous learning, identifying opportunities to refresh and update prior learning. They also need to be prioritising upskilling teams to keep pace with evolving cloud and AI tech demands. The IITPSA survey further reveals that South African employers identify ‘lack of training and education at basic level’ and ‘an insufficient pool of new graduates’ as major drivers of the skills gap, with 24% of respondents noting the need for additional graduate and professional training programmes. Furthermore, rapid technological change means skills acquired in traditional educational settings often don’t meet immediate industry needs, a gap being addressed by short courses and micro-credentials tailored to specific competencies.

With the widening skills gap, attracting, retaining, and developing staff requires organisations to invest in continuous learning opportunities, whether through in-house or external facilities. To this end, for example, SoftwareOne has its own academy providing learning courses that in some cases run concurrently with on-the-job training, building stronger pathways into technological careers.

To help future-proof their operations, companies should look to develop an agile, skilled workforce with depth of quantity and quality, finding new pools of talent from which they can draw. In this way companies will better be able to manage a highly competitive work environment and fill their skills pipeline.

Both the 2024 IITPSA report and SoftwareOne’s 2023 Cloud Skills report identified currently untapped talent sources, such as mid-career professionals looking to change direction, women returning to work after a break to raise a family, and other diverse age groups and career stages. There are many opportunities for these individuals with limited or no prior experience in technology to enter or re-enter the world of digital technology. Promoting diversity is critical in closing the skills gap as well as in bringing multiple points of view to technical innovation.

The IITPSA report in particular highlights the under-representation of women in the technology sector, which has ranged between 23%-34.3% over the past decade. Given that women account for just over 50% of South Africa’s population, this limits the available talent pool for the country. SoftwareOne’s Academy has a ‘Returnship’ initiative that supports women by focusing on bringing them back into the workplace after a career break. This initiative is an example of how organisations can actively address gender disparities, aligning with the IITPSA’s emphasis on increasing female representation in ICT to help close the skills gap.

Only through the efforts of public private partnerships can the technology sector collaboratively ensure that education systems, business and industry leaders align to meet future ICT demands. This requires a degree of knowledge sharing and proactive talent sourcing strategies to prepare for emerging technology needs and mitigate skills shortages before they become critical. The technologies shaping the workforce in 2025, and the most in demand but under supplied, include AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, and data science. These technologies are evolving all the time, underscoring the need for timely and relevant skills development programmes.

The IITPSA report points out that while 97% of organisations are focusing on workforce upskilling, addressing human factors such as building a culture of empowerment and optimism are essential to improving retention, boosting productivity and enhancing the overall work experience. Similarly, SoftwareOne’s Cloud Skills Report reveals that 93% of companies view investment in immediate solutions like cloud managed services as a priority to address skills shortages, reinforcing the broader vision of enabling sustainable digital transformation by placing people at the centre of technological progress.

The rising trend of remote and hybrid work models is reflected in both SoftwareOne’s Cloud Skills Report findings and those of the IITPSA Skills Report. Remote working and digital nomadism align with SoftwareOne’s perspective on worker retention strategies, enabling SoftwareOne (and other companies who subscribe to this way of thinking) to attract global talent and potentially fill local skills gaps. The IITPSA report shows that 8% of South African ICT professionals are working remotely for overseas employers. “Remote work has enabled South Africans to compete in a global ICT talent pool,” says the report.

It is clear that there is a need for different strategies to address the global and local digital skills gap.

Investments in cloud managed services, alongside targeted reskilling efforts, can directly address the productivity and retention challenges that arise from skills shortages. In parallel, targeted reskilling efforts ensure long-term sustainability by creating a pipeline of skilled professionals. These include stronger partnerships between academia and industry, the expansion of short term and micro-credential skills-based certifications, flexible work arrangements to incentivise employees, and the inclusion of more women in the skills pipeline.

Not addressing the digital skills gap is detrimental to the future of businesses across all sectors and will have an impact of the growth of South Africa’s economy and its ability to reduce unemployment. A strong pipeline of ICT skills is required to support the development of the digital economy and to ensure South Africa remains an attractive investment destination for international technology providers.