Tech talent shortage hounds AsPac firms

MANILA, Philippines — Companies in Asia Pacific are experiencing a shortage in data professionals and program developers, opening up a gap for artificial intelligence (AI) to fill.

The International Data Corp. (IDC) yesterday said up to four in every five enterprises in the region are finding it difficult to hire personnel for information technology (IT) roles.

Based on a survey, IDC said firms find it difficult to scout new talent for data management, data science, as well as for IT operations.

More than half of the respondents also said they lack cloud professionals, project managers, networking engineers, cybersecurity experts and software developers. IDC research director Lily Phan said enterprises should explore automating some of their processes to address the labor gap.

“Skills are difficult to find and take a long time to replace. At least 53 percent of organizations in [Asia and the Pacific] are taking three to four months longer compared to a year ago to fill tech roles,” Phan said.

“As skill shortage is affecting nearly all industries, organizations must prioritize upscaling digital skills and implement automation technologies to streamline business processes,” she said.

Phan suggested that labor-dependent industries, particularly education, government, health care, hospitality and manufacturing, consider automating repetitive tasks to allow employees to focus on customer work.

According to Phan, processes requiring little to no coding can be left to AI, optimizing business productivity and increasing customer and employee satisfaction.

Without any organizational reforms in the face of labor shortage, Phan warned that management could be forced to transfer workload to their existing employees. Further, firms may suffer from increased cybersecurity risks in the absence of tech experts to protect them.

Apart from the labor gap, IDC said more than half of enterprises saw a significant number of their IT staff resign last year. As a consequence, over a third of the firms delayed their tech initiatives and some changed the direction of their plans.

The labor shortage in the region exposes the imbalance in the availability of IT talents given that in North America, tech giants like Facebook are even laying off workers in the thousands.