Despite Economy, Organizations Face Significant Information Technology (IT) Talent Gap: Deloitte Survey

Date Published: 

NEW YORK, September 21, 2009 — According to new research from Deloitte, IT functional leaders have an increasingly clear understanding of what they must do to effectively support their organizations’ business strategies. However, existing IT talent strategies and programs appear to be falling short - leaving IT without the talent necessary to do the job.

Based on a global survey of 306 IT decision-makers and executive business managers, and 15 subsequent one-on-one interviews with select respondents, current IT talent issues are having an impact on IT and business performance. Based on the research, Deloitte identifies two major IT talent gaps: growing talent gap for IT leaders and project managers; and the critical need for improved IT talent strategies and program execution. Additional key findings included:

• The majority of survey respondents (51percent) strongly believe talent issues have limited their organization’s productivity and efficiency.
• Half of the respondents say the talent shortage is limiting their ability to innovate, which is the strategic core of the benefits that technology can bring to a business.
• Significant numbers of respondents indicate that IT talent issues are having a material impact on other key dimensions of business success - growth (58 percent), speed to market (54 percent), quality (53 percent) and customer relationships (53 percent).
• The vast majority of IT organizations surveyed expect to expand their workforces over the next three-to-five years. In fact, nearly half of the respondents (47 percent) expect to see at least 5 percent annual growth in the IT workforce over that period - even as the pool of experienced and qualified IT workers in many countries gets smaller.

“Even in the midst of hiring freezes and layoffs, organizations continue to face talent shortages in critical areas such as IT,” said Jeff Schwartz, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “We believe differentiation is key when trying to attract, develop and retain top IT talent. This means organizations will need to revitalize their efforts and focus on areas such as company brand, workforce flexibility, multi-generation workforce strategies, job rotations, virtual management skills, improved on-boarding and accelerated development.”

Deloitte offers additional recommendations for organizations to consider as they address current and future IT talent challenges:

1. Establish clear roles and responsibilities. CIOs and their management teams need to own and lead the IT talent challenge. However, HR/talent functional leaders and teams have significant opportunities to improve their strategic partnership with IT by improving their capabilities and focusing on services that address the unique talent needs of the IT function.
2. Improve workforce analysis and planning capabilities. Leverage internal and external data to provide clearer views of long-term talent trends, both in terms of supply (e.g., demographics, baby boomer retirements - and longer time to retirement, education, and global labor markets) and demand (e.g., new business requirements and technology advances).
3. Refine global sourcing strategies. Explore innovative ways to manage a diverse, global workforce that is increasingly comprised of non-traditional resources, including contractors, outsourcing vendors, retirees and offshore staff.
4. Strengthen alignment between IT and business priorities. Rotate people from IT into the business and from the business into IT. In an environment with significant outsourcing and global dispersion of IT workforces, these rotation programs are even more important because building and managing relationships with business units is one of the retained IT team’s primary responsibilities.
5. Learn how to manage a multi-sourced, global workforce. Without an improved approach to sourcing and managing a global workforce, global sourcing can be more of a hindrance than a help and organizations can end up in challenging situations where sourced employees are performing roles that could be staffed internally and the sourced labor costs are higher than they should be.
6. Pay more attention to on-boarding. In particular, companies should focus more effort on on-boarding for contractors and other non-traditional resources. Current processes are generally designed to meet the needs of traditional in-house staff. That, however, is not what the IT workforce looks like any more.

For a full copy of this research report and for the latest information about talent strategies, innovative talent and work solutions, please visit Deloitte’s Talent Management web site. Deloitte Review also recently published a detailed article on retaining key talent as the economy improves. The article entitled, “Where did our employees go? Examining the rise in voluntary turnover during economic recoveries,” can be found in Issue 5 at www.deloittereview.com.

About the Survey
Deloitte, in collaboration with CIO, conducted a global survey of 306 IT decision-makers and executive business managers at companies with revenues of $500 million or more. Additional insights were obtained through personal interviews with selected respondents.

The U.S. version of the survey was completed among qualified members of the CIO audience. The Canadian, European, and Asia-Pacific versions of the survey were completed among an international panel of IT and business professionals. In addition, Deloitte conducted the survey among select companies in South Africa. The survey was conducted between March 17, 2009 and April 1, 2009.

About Deloitte
As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Services LP, subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.