Digital skills are the key to UK’s economic recovery
Russ Shaw argues that digital skills have never been more important to the future of the UK economy and we need to develop home-grown tech talent to close the ever growing digital skills gap.
In the three months to October 2020, UK businesses made a record number of redundancies. There’s little to suggest that the rate of unemployment will fall, set to reach 2.6 million by mid 2021. Inherently tied to both this employment issue and the UK’s recovery from economic crisis is the digital skills gap.
The UK has one of the most advanced digital sectors in the world, and technology companies have been driving job creation for the last ten years. The growth levels have continued even during the pandemic, with a 36% increase in tech vacancies since lockdown, highlighting both the sector’s resilience and its importance to the UK’s future.
To meet the demand, the need for talent with digital skills is greater than ever, and new roles continue to surface, particularly as every sector of the economy is influenced by technology. This is not just about coding, programming skills and data analytics. For sectors like the creative and cultural industries, there is a growing need for digital marketing experts, website designers, content writers and project managers with some degree of digital skills and experience.
A significant opportunity is there, but the existing UK digital talent pool is not yet deep enough to fulfil the potential of a sector set to help lead the country out of recession.
To solve this, we first need to develop home grown tech talent. Although talent from overseas is vital and one of the reasons for the UK tech sector’s vibrancy, in a post-Brexit world, organisations will need to look closer to home for skilled workers.
The Government should focus on STEAM education from an early age, modernising both the primary and secondary school curriculums to incorporate the increasing importance of digital. It is great to see coding now included in the ICT curriculum, but we should go further by teaching the principles of AI and machine learning, website design and responsible usage of data. Every university should ensure that all graduates entering the workplace have a general level of digital skills.
In addition to the digital skills gap, we must address the diversity and inclusion gap in the broader tech sector. The demographic of the tech ecosystem is largely white and male. More diverse talent in tech — women, the BAME community, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community — will deliver sustainable growth by creating better products and services and well as address inherent biases in data analysis.
Now is not the time to ‘recreate the wheel’ as many grass-roots organisations already understand how to close the digital skills gap and develop diverse talent. Organisations like Code First: Girls and the Ada College in Tottenham, the First National College for Digital Skills, know this space. Companies should sign up for the Tech Talent Charter, which works with organisations to bring more women in companies both large and small. Organisations like Good Things Foundation, FutureDotNow and Digital Boost do great work to provide core digital skills to individuals and small businesses across a range of industries.
A key part of sector-specific projects, such as the Lord Mayor of the City of London’s Culture & Commerce Taskforce , involves matching the expertise of London’s premier commercial district with creative businesses that are exploring digital transformation. By using the City as a ‘testbed’ for the digital creative sector, and even ushering in the ‘Digital Culture Mile’, companies, freelancers and contractors in the creative industries can pilot tech-oriented products, services and experiences to learn how to digitally evolve and thrive.
The City is also well-placed to engage leaders across the private sector to assist and potentially fund these initiatives. The beneficiaries of a fully digitally skilled workforce in the private sector have a key role to play in providing the support to help. Many of these companies are also looking for diverse talent and digital natives who help then on their digital transformation journeys.
As tech, the arts and commerce collide, digital skills will help to rebalance the employment landscape and drive the economic recovery post-Covid. Fostering this collaboration will be at the heart of closing the skills gap, driving greater diversity and ensuring the UK tech sector is supporting many other sectors through this critical period of recovery and growth.
Russ Shaw is Founder of Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates. He originally founded Tech London Advocates in 2013 to ensure an independent voice of the technology community was heard, but with a focus on the private sector. Since then he has been championing London as a global tech hub and campaigning to address some of the biggest challenges facing tech companies in the UK.
He a member of the Culture and Commerce Taskforce, chaired by the Lord Mayor in partnership with the City of London Corporation and Culture Mile.
