'There's a real urgency to address this' - Microsoft exec on UK's digital skills gap

Simon Lambert talks to CRN about vendor’s new report on the stark reality of the UK’s digital skills gap and how partners can help guide customers through their skills shortage

UK organisations must act now to address the digital skills shortage to be ready for a post-COVID world, according to Microsoft's chief learning officer.

Simon Lambert spoke with CRN about the vendor's new report on the UK's and outlined his concerns about the current state of digital capabilities among UK businesses.

" There's a real urgency to address this issue post-COVID," he stated.

"We've identified three key areas around integrating digital into your business, unleashing the next generation of workers and empowering your people through the development of an inclusive culture - digital skills are the currency of digital transformation."

The study was a collaboration between Microsoft, Goldsmiths College, University of London and YouGov and surveyed nearly 600 UK business leaders and 2,000 employees of large organisations. The rationale behind it was to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on the skills shortage, Lambert said.

"We wanted to try and identify the impact of digital skills on a company's bottom line and, when harnessed correctly, digital skills can contribute to a boost in a company's bottom line," said Lambert (pictured right).

"Based on the analysis of the organisation's performance, we found that digital skills hold the key to about 2.4 per cent minimum of a firm's bottom line performance, so for a billion-dollar company that equates to around $24m every year.

"When you see that in the context of the current economic climate, that impact should not be underestimated."

The report revealed that 80 per cent of business leaders believe that investment in digital skills will be important to the UK's economic recovery.

However, 69 per cent of respondents stated that their organisation is currently facing a digital skills gap. Two in five leaders also fear the current lack of digital skills in their organisation will have a fairly negative impact on success, and 70 per cent expect to face a skills gap in their organisation over the next year, according to the research.

Cost was the main impediment for organisations in bridging their skills gap, followed by not having an investment strategy and simply not knowing which initiative to focus on, Lambert explained.

"[These figures] reinforce just the size of the challenge ahead of us and that challenge is to close that gap quickly," he elaborated.

"It really kind of pay dividends to kind of do the work through COVID because it's definitely amplified a problem that we've known we've had in the business for a while, but it's really put a focus on it in a much greater way."

The key skills areas that leaders need to focus and invest in are information literacy, data literacy, media literacy, digital creation, digital research and problem solving and innovation abilities, the report found.

"Data literacy was identified as the skill that would have the highest business impact on the back of the model the researchers created," Lambert continued.

"That is a skill which we know actually opens the doors to greater development of technical skills such as cloud, AI, data governance, analytics, coding and digital editing. For us, this was a reinforcement of the importance of being able to understand data in the context of emerging skills."

The report divided digital skills into two categories, productive and consumptive. The former being the ability to create digital tools and systems and the latter being the ability to use the tools that have been built for their use.

The report found that productive skills weren't being prioritised by organisations, with 69 per cent of respondents believing productive skills are important compared to the 81 per cent who believe that consumptive skills are important to their business.

Channel partners should highlight these figures to customers in order to address the digital skills gap head-on, Lambert added.

"Productive skills and technical skills are fundamental to driving an organisation's digital transformation," he said.

"Reinforcing that point through customers is something that I would want and encourage our channel partners to do because I think it's in all of our interests to try and address this challenge and support UK organisations as they come out of COVID."

Closing the skills gap will not be a quick and easy process, Lambert warned.

"There's no silver bullet that can close this gap," he stated.

"It will take a new era of investment, collaboration and complete commitment from employers, employees and government alike to continue to recover, respond and move forward. But I think it's more of a recognition and a realisation of the importance of upskilling our workforce to enable people to stay competitive in the future."