Investing in Tech Skills to Build Sustainable Growth
As we dive deeper into the digital era and embrace new AI products and automations, businesses will need to recruit tech skills to help the company react to new technologies and stay at the cutting-edge of innovation. In our recent survey with Tech Climbers, 55% of 200+ tech leaders said recruiting tech skills was a main priority, suggesting the majority of start-ups and scale-ups understand the urgency for agile and consistent innovation.
Experienced skills are expensive and with new job roles being created as businesses embrace new AI technologies, it’s becoming increasingly harder to find a hire experienced employees. However, not all new hires necessarily need to be experienced workers. AI isn’t going anywhere, and we all have a part to play in ensuring the UK has an AI-capable workforce if we want to continue to be a leading player in the evolution of AI.
In this blog, we’ll look at the different ways you can invest in digital and tech talent to overcome the skills shortage.
Hiring experienced talent
When hiring experienced talent, you can set an expectation for certain skills and experience, knowing that once they’re onboarded into the business, new employees will be able to get on with their role, with minimal supervision. In a scaling business where most (or all) employees are focussed on growth, this can often be seen as the only option, as they don’t have the time to dedicate to training.
However, hiring experienced talent does have its drawbacks. Specifically in a start-up and scale-up business, it can be all hands-on deck, with the majority of employees expected to be picking up day-to-day tasks and operations. This might not be what experienced tech talent have in mind, as they look to progress into roles with higher responsibility. Paired with the fact that new, experienced employees have less loyalty to the business (compared to talent that you invest in from the start), they’re more likely to be poached by other opportunities as market competition increases.
On-the-job training
If you have the resource and time to dedicate to a graduate or apprenticeship hire, it can be the most rewarding and sustainable hire you make.
Fresh out of education, with likely no previous 9-5 experience and ready to absorb new information, entry-level employees (unlike experienced employees) could become the perfect workers for a business, moulded as you require.
Appreciating the training and investment that you give them, they’re more likely to stay within the business and believe in your values. What’s more, their drive to impress will give them the goal to progress as the business scales. In the long run, you could be nurturing and training your future development.
Tech is constantly evolving – we’ve seen this was the emergence of ChatGPT over the last twelve months alone. As a result, on-the-job training has never been move key, but it’s only as good as the experienced gained. It’s important to evolve your solutions to ensure that your teams are learning the most up to date trends and theories. After all, these can have a massive impact on a business’ ability to remain competitive and should be encouraged to share their learnings for this reason.
As part of Microsoft’s partner pledge, we’re committed to driving the next generation of digital skills. One way we deliver on our promise is our focus on the apprenticeship model – for ourselves and our reseller partner networks. Although they’re ultimately more cost-effective longer-term, there are a few factors you need to consider.
Since apprentices and graduates will require high amounts of training, you need to ensure you have the resource available in house to dedicate time to coaching new employees and reviewing their tasks.
For your investment to play off in the long term, you also need to be mindful of their progression path and timescales – those that don’t progress as they level up their skills will start to look elsewhere.
What is Microsoft’s Partner Pledge?
Microsoft’s pledge is a partner promise that together we’ll make digital innovation a force for good. With a focus on growing tech talent, improve diversity & inclusion within the industry and harnessing the power of sustainable technology, Microsoft have collated resources and guides to support partners in their efforts to enhance the future of the industry.
Skills programmes
To remain competitive in the dawn of AI, roles within businesses will need to be created or adapted to seize the opportunities available. Organisations such as TIC Manchester believe businesses need to invest in skills programmes and encourage their employees to adopt the habit of continuous learning and upskilling in new areas to empower a new wave of innovation and growth. With the average tech employee out of education for over 10 years, it will be the businesses that make a habit of educating and retraining their employees alongside the latest trends that will come out on top.
However, as businesses encourage this through funding, it’s crucial that their employees also have the time to apply and test their learnings within their role.
Discover what tech leaders are saying about the market
Want to know more about how tech leaders are adapting to the latest trends and rise in competition? Download our latest report in partnership with Tech Climbers.