WTW Global Industry Leader, Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT)
Talent gaps have long haunted the TMT industry, particularly when it comes to the so-called ‘digital type’ (The main digital job categories are shown in the graphic on page 5). This problem is set to worsen as rapidly changing technology becomes more complex and expands to new areas of the business, and with competition from wholly unrelated industries now embracing digital, such as department stores and shipping companies, further heating up the battle for top talent.
Global events during the past 24 months have transformed the very nature of the employer-employee relationship, accelerating trends already in play and calling into question many things we took for granted before the pandemic, such as being required to work onsite.
Many employees are fundamentally reconsidering what they want from their careers and how they want to work. Employers are not only trying to determine how to support the individual needs of a diverse workforce but are also reconsidering many of the basics of how work gets done today. Employers across the world are adapting to a burst of new technologies and working to align their talent strategies with increasing demands for flexibility, personalized approaches, and remote delivery.
Facing ongoing change in 2021, TMT organizations around the world were forced to continually adapt and be resilient. Yet, while ‘uncertainty’ was the word of the year – nudging out 2020’s defining ‘unprecedented’ – one thing was clear: labour market pressures stemming from the pandemic and the ongoing shortage of talent have had a significant impact on how organizations manage to operate and will continue to do so as we go through 2022.
Source: WTW 2022 Global Benefits Attitude Survey | Worldometers | World Bank
With the above in mind, and following publication of WTW’s TMT Futures Report in August 2021, we continued to work with The Mack Institute’s Collaborative Innovation Program (CIP) at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, to dive further into the specific risk issues related the digital talent crisis. Our collective research and interviews with senior executives yielded further fresh insights into the risk issues associated with this key ‘megatrend’ facing the TMT industry.
Our 2022 TMT Futures Report -Workforce Transformation & The Digital Talent Crisis report is the result of our continued research around the global talent and skills race megatrend which in our view is the most important exposure facing the industry currently and a key link among the broader set of exposures facing TMT businesses.
While each of the five megatrends we reviewed in our TMT Futures Report 2021 has a distinctive risk profile, our project revealed extensive overlaps. Digital transformation, for example, fell into the digitalization category but has obvious
and profound implications for business models and strategy pressures, as well as operational complexity.
In WTW AI and Digital Talent Compensation Surveys, we review the following main digital job categories – see graphics below:
Source: WTW AI and Digital Talent Compensation Survey methodology
The challenges organisations are facing around the scarcity of digital talent are amplified by the increasing demand for such talent from non-tech organizations also transforming to become more digital, a process accelerated by the pandemic and new ways of working. The talent race for TMT companies centres largely on the hunt for digital talent whose roles are also relevant to a number of other industries. We define this as all roles contributing to or accelerating the digital transformation journey of an organization. The core focus of digital talent is on new and emerging technologies or their direct application and all the disciplines necessary for digital enablement or transformation. While many of these exist only in TMT organizations, the demand for digital talent now transcends industries.
Global talent and skills race How can we hire the people we need to hire at the speed we need to hire? How do we keep them motivated? We need to put at least as much creativity and energy in the workforce as we do in any other part of our business.
For this reason, we reconvened a Mack Institute team and drew on our own extensive client relationships to probe deeper into talent and workforce-related issues with two basic objectives:
Discerning the outlines of a workforce needed to ensure future business success
Identifying priorities and pathways for discovering, recruiting, and retaining the talent and skill sets needed as TMT businesses continues to evolve.
Akin to the process we applied with our TMT Futures Report 2021, students in Mack Institute’s CIP team worked with WTW TMT industry experts to lay out the goals and scope of our research into future workforce needs and human capital trends.
Initial research and WTW’s industry knowledge and experience enabled us to shape a hypothesis we subsequently tested with senior TMT business leaders representing a wide range of companies, from start-ups to global technology leaders in all major aspects of TMT.
We focused much of our research and interviews on the practical, here-and-now steps (and occasional missteps) companies are taking to work through current talent challenges while bracing for future business needs.
We are happy to share our findings and some of our thinking about the workforce of the future, including practical lessons leaders can deploy in their efforts to achieve digital-first cultures, continuously reskilling employees, and in using AI, data science, analytics, and other technologies to shape and accelerate workforce transformation.
We also share perspectives on how the insurance and risk management industry is responding to people-related risks, and a selection of scenarios and supporting insights.
If you would like to explore the issues in this or any other WTW insight, please do get in touch.
Finally, we are grateful to the Mack Institute’s CIP team and to the business leaders who were willing to share their insights and experience which was illuminating and, frankly, a delight to see these well-conceived and creative steps business leaders are taking today to create the workforce of tomorrow.
