Professor Barry Dwolatzky

It seems that with the lack of - in particular - black skills in certain IT disciplines, poaching is something companies will have to learn to live with for a while, although the conundrum is that because there is currently a limited pool of skilled black professionals to choose from in this sector, and because so much poaching occurs, many companyies are loathe to spend time and effort on providing skills to employees who may be easily stolen away soon after.

According to Gartner, SA's labour pool is already critically stretched and will need to skill up drastically in order to achieve government's aim of positioning the country as an outsource destination.

However, ITWeb's recent IT Skills Survey has revealed that this is easier said than done, with massive growth in this industry expected in the next 12 months, while the number of graduates emerging from tertiary institutions with IT-related skills is a mere trickle in comparison.

It seems that organisations need to bite the bullet and put far more effort into skills development and training than they do currently, although it must be remembered that training for the sake of training does not create employment. What is needed is skills development that is in line with market needs.

BACKGROUND TO THE SKILLS SURVEY

The questionnaire used was developed by ITWeb in conjunction with Fidentia and was focused on responses from both staff and management, in order to get both sides of the picture, with the data also analysed by the two organisations.

The objectives of the survey were to:
* Analyse the current and future needs for IT skills and the capabilities in the local corporate environment,
* Discover what local companies are doing to attract and retain in-house skills,
* Look at what capabilities will be required to meet these skills development needs,
* Understand which skills are most in demand, and
* What business and soft skills are needed most.

The total sample group for the survey was 655 respondents, of which 489 comprised the useable sample.

Demographics of the sample showed yet again the preponderance of males in this sector of the industry, with 80% of respondents falling into this category; 60% of these were between the ages of 26 and 40.

The vast majority (85%) were in permanent employment, while 13% were contractors, and most respondents (71%) were based in Gauteng, with 18% from the Western Cape.

SOFTWARE SKILLS

According to Jaco Viljoen, principle consultant at Software Futures, the fact that talent is becoming harder to find is something of a global trend, with companies around the world battling it out for the brainpower of a limited number of individuals. Since SA is part of the global village, it means we are also competing for these brains.

Jaco Viljoen, principle consultant at Software Futures

"Part of this is down to the fact that the sector is a rapidly growing one, while it is also in part due to staff being readied for management positions. But the real question is, if they are moved into this new role, who replaces them?" What this boils down to is that although the IT industry as a whole is growing, so, too, is the skills shortage. Where skills are most noticeably lacking is in the fields of process management, configuration and change management, and development, closely followed by testing, business analysis and architecture skills.

"There are areas where the available skills are considered 'just right', and these include IT infrastructure management, team leadership and systems analysis, followed by design, systems engineering and package implementation," he says.

However, he says there are ways for the industry to address the shortages affecting it, both in the short term and in the longer term.

"To begin with, leverage the skills you already have in your organisation by putting employees with the necessary skills into roles where they can do the most good.

"In the longer term, seek to develop skills within your company using a mix of formal and informal approaches in order to achieve both classroom-based and experience-based learning.

"Finally, if it is needed, import the skills you lack by bringing people with the right skills into your organisation, but ensure that you assess their fit within the business, plan their work and support them as needed."

When it comes to what companies are doing to address the shortage, there is an even split between organisations providing sponsored training and those encouraging staff to develop further skills on their own, while a further 17% are addressing the problem through recruitment, rather than development.

An almost equal number of respondents in the survey felt that the executive management team was responsible for training (18%) and felt that the onus lay on themselves for this (17%), while a further 16% held that it was the responsibility of the CIO of the organisation.

However, when it came down to the manner in which such training was conducted, the company and the individual differed quite markedly.

Viljoen says that an organisation that wishes to put together a skills training programme should do the following: firstly, such a programme requires a sponsor from the executive management team, although the choice of what training should be done must be left up to the individual. This training should be educational training, followed by on-the-job coaching or mentoring, with the mentor then reporting back on the progress made to the sponsor.

"A holistic skills profile should contain elements of people skills and process skills, as well as technology skills, and where these three areas overlap are where the most attention should be paid, since this is where the problems often hide.

"The survey also brought to our attention which people, process and technology skills are considered to be 'hot property'," he says.

"The top three people skills are negotiation skills (19%), followed by work/life balance and stress management (both 18%), while the important process skills are SAP modules (23%), software development process and process assessment and improvement (both 12%). As for technology skills, Microsoft .Net comes in tops with 17%, automated testing is second with 16%, and 15% of respondents thought that BPM - IBM Websphere skills were vital."

He points out that although 54% thought their workload had increased substantially over the past year, the majority of people were still satisfied with their career, and this was due to companies providing training or professional development, offering flexible hours and offering incentives and bonuses.

"While the challenge of the job, the work atmosphere, total compensation, quality of top management and career prospects were all listed as key factors in job satisfaction, it is interesting to note that IT comes in at number one on the list of top ten most stressful professions."

RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

According to John Mullins, general manager at People Futures, it is expected that by 2010, six out of ten roles in IT will be business-facing, as people move away from being pure technologists to becoming more versatile professionals with business minds.

He claims that 10% to 15% of people in the sector may leave it, due to a lack of interest and the automation of tasks.

"The skills problem is not only affecting SA, as globally, those undergraduates listing computer sciences as a major dropped by an incredible 70% from 2000 to 2004, which flies in the face of statistics that suggest that by 2012 one in four jobs will be IT-related," he says. "This lack of interest is generally put down to the perceived threat of outsourcing to a long-term career, the after-effects of the dotcom meltdown and the increasing attraction of other disciplines, such as biological studies."

He says that locally, the survey showed that there is a definite need for skils in certain areas, since specific job functions appear destined to witness huge growth, most notably in the areas of applications development, systems analysis and database management.

"There are a number of perceived risks in the sector that affect a company's decisions with regard to skills development. These include the risk of placing lower quality staff in positions they cannot handle or where the job is beyond their capability and the development of an elite minority that are adopting a mercenary approach to their careers. These are the highly skilled individuals who seem to sell their skills to the highest bidder, rather than offering a company any loyalty. "There is also the risk of serious delays occurring on projects, due to insufficient skilled labour, an increased poaching of the available talent by rival organisations and due to this, the problem of certain businesses keeping their own talent 'underdeveloped' or less skilled, in order to make them less attractive to competitors."

Ultimately, however, Mullins be-lieves that there are also opportunities to be had for those farsighted enough to see them.

"Companies should look to convert hard IT skills to a more business focused approach, to ensure that staff are more versatile, while instituting endearment programmes for contractors and permanent staff mean that the skilled individuals working for the corporation will feel like they're wanted," he says.

"More importantly, graduate recruitment is essential, and it is imperative that organisations work hand in hand with the tertiary education institutions to develop programmes that will benefit the graduates and the organisations."

THE EDUCATION VIEW

Professor Barry Dwolatzky, academic director at the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University, agrees that such graduate programmes are key, but he says that the real problem the industry faces is the lack of high-school students with the correct background to work in IT.

"The real bottleneck is at school level, where far too few learners are taking mathematics and science through to matric, meaning that they do not have the necessary subjects behind them to pursue a career in the sector," he says.

"And it is virtually impossible to teach these skills at tertiary level, since one needs the years of background in maths and science that can only be gained at high school."

He says that the real area where such education needs to be done is at primary school level, where teachers and parents should be making the children aware of the importance that a background in those subjects could have on their potential future careers.

The key skills gaps that have been identified by government are in the middle and lower level skills, and programmes are in place to fill these gaps, but the critical areas are in project management, architects and designers.

"What is needed here is to educate small numbers of black graduates and postgraduates to fill these specific areas within the industry," he says.

"While SA generally supports a 'conventional' supply chain for skills, namely the move from school to university and on to recruitment, because of the bottleneck created by a lack of maths and science knowledge, we also require unconventional approaches."

He says that examples of unconventional options include the work being done by Wits University in conjunction with the ICT sector to pilot Level-7 learnerships in software engineering and telecoms engineering, the JCSE itself, which has been launched as an academic, government and industry initiative to develop high-level skills and promote best practice, as well as a CPD programme which will lead to a Master's degree.

"Nonetheless, much work remains to be done if we are to achieve what we require, and it needs to be done via a whole range of players coming together to develop these skills. We need contributions from academia - at tertiary, secondary and primary level - as well as from government and the ICT sector at large."

DON'T LOSE SIGHT OF THE GOAL

So the IT sector in South Africa appears to be growing at an enormous rate. This is leading to the massive skills shortage the industry faces, meaning that companies need to seriously focus on developing the critical skills that are currently lacking, as there are only so many already-skilled people to go around.

Government has launched a number of initiatives to help overcome the shortage, as have the tertiary education institutions, but it is vital that as early as primary school level, children are being taught that mathematics and science are crucial to their future careers, since all the programmes in the world cannot help organisations to develop the necessary skills if the foundation is not there.

Businesses should seek to align their IT skills development programmes with employees' preferences, as well as industry best practices, and they need to be wary of poachers.

Ultimately, the focus should be on developing key skills in individuals, but attention should also be paid to the team's effectiveness.

The road ahead may appear difficult, but with the commitment of all stakeholders - the IT sector, government and the various education institutions - the skills destination can be reached, as long as no one loses sight of the goal.