UK Job Candidates Favour Tech-Savvy Companies

New research conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Tableau Software has revealed that half of UK job candidates would reject a job offer from a company that offered no digital and data potential.

Training

The research results, which were obtained from 1,100 office workers and C-suite executives from across the UK, showed that a vacancy that offered digital and analytics training (important for 80 per cent) and where a commitment to encouraging new skills was just a perk of the job (90 per cent) would make most candidates more likely to accept a job offer with a specific company or organisation.

Interested In The Company

The research results showed that as well as being interested in the opportunity to gain skills to make themselves more data fluent, most candidates (80 per cent) also recognised the value that training or learning and development programmes could bring to an organisation’s digital and data analytics strategy and competitiveness, thereby making it a more attractive organisation to work in.

40 per cent of candidates, for example, think that companies that invest in training and learning and development programmes are likely to get the benefit of employee engagement and retention as a result.

SHRM Report

A 2019 Society for Human Resource Management report showed that the U.S. is facing similar tech skills shortage challenges with the workforce not having enough workers and skilled candidates to fill an ever-increasing number of high-skilled jobs. The report highlighted candidates not having the right technical skills as the reason why 35 per cent of organisations are struggling to hire suitable candidates and suggests that training is one of the most effective ways to bridge the skills gap for both retention and recruitment.

The report says that an increase in worker training and education, and companies collaborating closely with educational institutions in order to improve graduate employability and supplementing the existing workforce with foreign-born talent could be a good way to meet the needs of companies and job candidates.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

With the effective use of data playing an important role in the success of businesses and with job applicants realising the value that could be created for themselves in the tech job market and for the companies they join through tech training and development, there is pressure on companies to offer this as a way to attract good staff.

UK businesses have been faced with a tech skills shortage for several years now, which was exacerbated by forces (such as Brexit fears) deterring overseas talent. Also, a recent Open University report, ‘Leading in a Digital Age’, highlighted how business leaders themselves still need to be equipped, through technology training, to manage digital change in order to improve the performance of their businesses.

Considering the number of factors involved in creating the skills shortage in the first place among workers and business leaders, many feel that the burden to reverse the situation and create a more tech-skilled workforce shouldn’t be down to companies alone financing training for their staff.  Many businesses feel that a wider strategy involving the government, the education system and businesses working together is the way forward to developing a base of digital skills in the UK population and to ensure that the whole tech ecosystem finds effective ways to address the skills gap and keep the UK’s tech industries and business attractive and competitive.