Why IT Skills Development in South Africa Can No Longer Wait
In an article by Lewis Taylor, he elaborates on the threat posed by not having the right skills to meet customers’ needs. He highlights a striking figure: “By 2025, 90% of enterprises will be affected by IT skills shortages, costing approximately $6.5 trillion globally.”
I have spent the past few months researching IT Capability Academies. The LRMG IT Talent Management team has built several Capability Academies aligned to future IT skills. These cover Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Data Science and Cloud, among others. Each academy is built around both the technical and behavioural skills that future-fit IT teams need.
Do You Know How Many of What Skills You Actually Need?
We all go shopping from time to time. Before we go, we ask ourselves: what do I need, and how many? Nothing is more frustrating than coming home to find you are one item short. Building IT skills is no different. Do you know how many of what you need? More importantly, have you quantified what you think you already have?
How LRMG Helps South African Organisations Close the IT Skills Gap
Within the LRMG IT Talent DigitalCampus team, we help organisations answer these questions. Yes, we provide the vehicle: Capability Academies that build your talent pool. But we also go further. IT Staffing Diagnostics and Benchmarks clarify the skills you actually have versus the skills you actually need. This limits the risk of finding yourself short when it matters most.
In addition, we assist with role definition, competency frameworks, job descriptions and grading, as well as rewards benchmarking. This helps organisations attract and retain the right skills. We also conduct industry-aligned technical IT skills assessments and proficiency reviews to measure the depth of your team’s capability.
With all of this information in hand, we ensure that Capability Academies are precisely calibrated to deliver the right skills at the right time. Over the coming weeks, I will be publishing a series of articles expanding on each of these areas in more detail.
The LRMG group of companies specialises in igniting the high performance of people. We have a 25-year track record in partnering with high-consequence industries.
