As many as 81 per cent of organisations are encountering a shortage in “power user or developer” tech skills, as per a survey, but despite this gap, only 19 per cent of them have established a skill taxonomy and 43 per cent have conducted skill benchmarking at the employee level.

These findings came in a report titled “Tech skills transformation – Navigating the future of work in 2025 and beyond" by professional services organisation EY, and skills intelligence and skills assessment platform iMocha.

The study comprehensively examines the integration of technology skills across all job roles, including those beyond traditional IT roles. It analyses the topic from three perspectives: in-demand tech skills across domains, the impact of tech skills transformation on organisations, and how organisations are responding to tech skills transformation. 

There is an estimated global tech talent pool of over 26 million people with 65 per cent in software engineering roles followed by 27 per cent in IT roles and 8 per cent in business app related roles.

Amit D Mishra, Founder and CEO of iMocha, however, said that job roles and skill needs are evolving at a rapid pace. He also highlighted that 28 per cent of leaders believe they will have to revamp tech skills for a third of their talent base by 2025 to stay competitive.

“The adoption of skill taxonomy and benchmarking is a clear indicator that the increasing complexity of tech skills is necessitating leaders to reconstruct their talent acquisition, development, and management strategies,” he added.

The report notes that the lack of future tech skills is likely to be driven by the high demand for application developers and business app users, indicated by 76 and per cent 62 per cent of the surveyed organisations, respectively.

India is highlighted in the report as one of the top tech talent markets, with a 16 per cent market share, equivalent to Europe's 16 per cent and the USA's 20 per cent.

Alpana Dutta, Partner at People Advisory Services, EY India, said as the usage of different tools increases, the complexity of the skills needed across various functional areas such as software engineering, IT, and business application power user is also increasing.

This is why 62 per cent of employers believe that 5-15 per cent of their talent base will require skills transformation in the next 2-3 years, with 33 per cent of employers estimating that 15-35+ per cent of their talent base will require this upgrade.

"For HR leaders, enabling tech skills transformation will necessitate taking a multi-disciplinary approach, with focus on developing granular, real-time intelligence into an organisation’s skills inventory. We also expect to see increasing investment in skills intelligence platforms." Dutta added.

According to the findings, the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) and IT/ITeS (Information Technology enabled Services) industries prove to be the biggest tech talent incubators accounting for almost half (more than 47 per cent) of the resources. Other major industries that incubate tech talent include BFSI (Banking Financial Services and Insurance) (10 per cent), logistics and supply chain (8 per cent), and telecom (5 per cent).

There is a steady and sector-agnostic shortage of adequate tech skills especially on the application development and usage fronts. As many as 28 per cent companies surveyed have opined that tech skills transformation of about 35 per cent of their teams would become critical to retain competitive edge by 2025.

Half of these companies are from India and the other half from the UK/EU. Further, about 75 per cent of the UK/EU respondents stated that there are tech-skills gap in business app user roles whereas 60 per cent of the Indian and 50 per cent US respondents acknowledged this gap.

The report also offers insights for HR leaders to evaluate their current HR tech stack and integrate skills intelligence tools as a critical component for business continuity. Skills intelligence enables dynamic and more accurate decision making and also underscores the role of power users. These are users that need multi-disciplinary skill development across HR systems, data analytics, and programme management skills alongside cross-functional knowhow.