According to a recent IDC report, Enterprise Automation to Mitigate the Digital Skills Shortage, around 60%-80% of AP organisations find it difficult or extremely difficult to fill vacancies in many IT roles including security, developers, and data professionals.
Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining employees, increased security risks, reduced customer satisfaction, and loss of critical knowledge.
Although big tech companies' layoff announcements are making headlines, these layoffs are not representative of the overall skills shortage in the market. Difficulty to fill job vacancies is still among the top issues faced by organisations across industries, especially labour-dependent ones.
“Skills are difficult to find and take a long time to replace. 53% of organisations in AP are taking 3-4 months longer compared to a year ago to fill technology roles. As skill shortage is affecting nearly all industries, organisations must prioritise upscaling digital skills and implement automation technologies to streamline business processes," said Dr Lily Phan, research director for Future of Work at IDC.
Moreover, 55% of organisations in AP experienced greater numbers of employees quitting their jobs last year, contributing to the shortage which has caused 37% of organisations in AP to delay tech initiatives and 36% to change the direction of tech initiatives.
To compensate for the labour shortage, enterprise automation can be a solution for organisations in the public sector and labour-dependent industries such as education, manufacturing, government, healthcare, and the hospitality sector.
Automation can take up repetitive tasks and allow employees to focus on customised, bespoke requests from clients. Low/no-code platforms can support non-IT employees to automate their tasks and significantly improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.
There are opportunities for automation solution providers to showcase their offerings to organisations with sizeable frontline workforces such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, government, and education. These sectors are severely impacted by talent shortage and will benefit greatly when applying automation solutions to reduce employees’ workload and improve productivity.
