As time passes, what has come to be known, for better or worse, as the “digital talent gap”, continues to intensify and grow hyperbolically. Indeed, there are not enough candidates – in any and all industries – who are qualified to undertake tasks requiring manipulations of the digital world. Indeed, this can significantly inhibit the growth of any given business; one cannot compete in this screen-oriented age if you haven’t the resources to help you expand online.
Here, then, are just a few of the ways by which your business can be impacted by this widening and, ultimately, disheartening scission between those who are qualified to shape the future and those who are, at the moment, lacking those necessary skills intrinsic to digital literacy and comprehension.
It’s Difficult to Find People Who Can Get the Job Done
If you’ve ever looked for the perfect candidate within your company to undertake tasks on the web – be it social media or website design – and find that no one is truly qualified to do these things, it’s incredibly time-consuming to look to external candidates for something that requires immediate attention; moreover, if you’re looking to find a financial recruiter in your city or fill another position that requires immediate attention, these incessant rounds of hiring will, no doubt, be an inconvenience to other branches of the company. Indeed, without people readily available, web analytics is not a viable option.
It Makes Current Employees Insecure
Without the right teamwork and networking skills available, employees without soft or hard digital skills are prone to feeling not only bereft of opportunity but quite simply, irrelevant (if not detrimental) to their company. Indeed, this feeling of precariousness – as though they could lose their job at any given moment because of their sheer digital illiteracy – compromises morale and makes the workplace fraught with tension. Even with training and workshopping, many employees feel too lost to stay on track and keep up with those who are well-versed in matters of digital savviness.
It Slows Down Productivity and Company Growth
Without employees who possess hard and/or soft digital skills, companies can quickly fall behind or, in more severe cases, become compromised, as far as security goes. Without being able to regularly update a digitized archive, for example, sensitive information could easily be hacked and let loose into the world. Indeed, some of the biggest gaps in digital hard skills include, but are not limited to cybersecurity and cloud computing. This is, no doubt, problematic for the finances of a company.
Indeed, all of the aforementioned factors can negatively impact the monetary projections of a business. Luckily, there are a number of precautions that business overseers can undertake in order to prevent the aforementioned effects of the ever-widening digital talent gap. For instance, by reorganizing not just one’s hiring process, but the entirety of the company’s aims to account for the digital epoch in which we live, one is bound to attract digital talent in each and every employee. Moreover, it’s a possibility to develop digital talent within the company once this diversification and reorganization is undertaken and, with this in mind, leadership ought to be tech-savvy in itself, rather than depending on employees to bear the brunt of the work. With these changes in mind, each and every company – large and small – can help to shrink the digital talent gap that threatens too many industries.
