Published on the 23/03/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

Training is one mitigation to staff flight risk…

Digital skills training won’t just boost A/NZ productivity, it can help counteract the Great Resignation and make for happy staff.

New research conducted by AlphaBeta shows companies across both Australia and New Zealand which had invested in digital skills training not only saw increased revenue and improved employee productivity, but higher employee retention and satisfaction. (Importantly, the report looks not just at ICT staff, but non-IT workers across the economy using digital skills in their work.)

Fraser Thompson, co-founder and principal of AlphaBeta, says the survey shows implementing digital skills training has ‘really important’ impacts on employee engagement and retention and myth-busts a common belief.

“A huge portion of the reason people work for us is actually learning and development opportunities.”

“There’s been this concern that if you give digital skills training to a worker, you’re basically just making them more employable and as an employer are investing in building the capabilities of another firm – that staff will get that digital skills training and then leave for another job.

“The research here doesn’t bear that out,” Thompson says.

Instead, 80 percent of Kiwi companies surveyed who had implemented training say that digital skills training had improved employee retention, at a time when 62 percent of companies surveyed noted an increase in staff leaving their organisation. 

Equally, 80 percent of workers surveyed reported higher job satisfaction from digital skills training. 

In Australia 84 percent of organisations reported higher employee retention through digital skills training. 

Greg Davidson, Group CEO of Datacom which is investing heavily in upskilling its team with training partnerships with both vendors and tertiary providers, and mentoring as well as grad programs, says the importance of fostering continued growth in the workforce can’t be understated.

“A huge portion of the reason people work for us is actually learning and development opportunities,” he says. Opportunity to learn and grow was one of the top two key attractions for employees in a survey of Datacom staff last year.

However, he points out that training isn’t enough – application of learnings is also a critical factor. 

“There’s no point just doing academic learning without applying it to project oriented activity. We have a  really conscious program that follows up any training people do with reassignment to work that is relevant to help cement the skills”

Remuneration for training is also critical, he notes. 

“If you don’t immediately recognise the increased skills with appropriate change in remuneration you are probably not going to retain people,” he says bluntly. 

“You have got to be organised about how you approach it and recognise when people have upskilled and taken on new responsibilities and you have to recognise it.”

A strong mentor culture is also required. 

“Everyone in leadership in our company is encouraged to identify and work with those who are talented and motivated to help connect them to either a development opportunity or a career pathway.

“Supporting that range of different career pathways is essential in order to be a desirable place to work in the tech sector.”

But, he’s equally blunt that the ongoing skills issues can’t be solved by any single organisation.

“The corporate sector can’t look to tertiary institutions to do it by themselves because the rate with which the need for skills is evolving is just too quick. So it falls on all of us collectively – the tech industry, tertiary providers and government – to work together to make this scale-up happen.”

The report, Building Digital Skills for the Changing Workforce in Asia Pacific and Japan, was commissioned by cloud hosting provider AWS to look at the increasing skills gaps, whether training is being undertaken, the challenges and benefits of training, and to highlight how the pandemic has further emphasised the need for digital skills training. Eighty-one percent of Australian workers and 80 percent of Kiwi workers say they need more digital skills to cope with changes in their jobs.

The solutions, however, aren’t that simple, with the report highlighting a training shortfall: While some 97 percent of Kiwi organisations see a need to train workers in digital skills, just 25 percent are doing so. In Australia, just 30 percent have a digital skills training plan in place.

Among the top barriers cited by both workers and employers was lack of time and limited awareness of both the training options and the digital skills needed. 

The report shows 3.7 million workers in Australia (20 percent of the workforce) and one million in New Zealand – around 35 percent of the Kiwi workforce – will need digital skills training over the next year alone to keep pace with technological advancement.

Thompson says New Zealand’s need for digital skills training is at the higher end of that seen in the Asia Pacific due in part to the nature of the local economy, which uses a lot of digital skills in the workplace, and the perceived gaps seen by employers.

Topping the skills required by Kiwi employers by 2025 were the ability to use cloud-based tools, such as CRM, and cybersecurity. 

Best practice

Thompson says there are a number of ways to tackle the barriers to digital training, including an increase in the number of digital skills-specific micro-credentials and courses and, crucially, broadening the awareness of training options.

He cites the example of Australia’s Skill Finder portal, a one-stop portal for digital skills, suggesting similar is needed in New Zealand.

The development of digital skills frameworks by industry, a la Singapore’s Industry Transformation Maps – which New Zealand is currently attempting to mirror with its Industry Transformation Plans – is a standout example.

Thompson says Singapore’s offering takes a holistic approach, looking at a sector, key trends for the sector and works backwards to understand the skills and training required to support that, and wrap it into the education framework. 

He dubbed Singapore’s offering ‘fairly unique’.

“Most companies when they do sector programs do only part of it. They may look at the trends, but they don’t map it back to the skills. Where you see the real uplift is where you do that holistic package for a specific sector.”

Asked about the New Zealand ITP plans, Stuart Wakefield, Ministry of Education chief digital officer, says the Digital ITP, which is currently out for consultation, is focused only on the tech sector, rather than the broader one million needing training.

“There are other ITPs in development, so you would probably need to look at the totality across all sectors and proposed sectors there.”

Supporting employers in their training provision and empowering workers to drive digitisation within an organisation and providing targeted support for underserved communities round out Thompson’s recommendations.