Around 60 per cent-80 per cent of Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (AP) organisations find it difficult or extremely difficult to fill vacancies in many IT roles including security, developers, and data professionals, reveals a recent report by global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

According to the report 'Enterprise Automation to Mitigate the Digital Skills Shortage', major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining employees, increased security risks, reduced customer satisfaction, and loss of critical knowledge.

Although big tech companies' layoff announcements are making headlines, these layoffs are not representative of the overall skills shortage in the market. Difficulty to fill job vacancies is still among the top issues faced by organisations across industries, especially labour-dependent ones.

“Skills are difficult to find and take a long time to replace. 53 per cent of organisations in AP are taking 3-4 months longer compared to a year ago to fill technology roles. As skill shortage is affecting nearly all industries, organisations must prioritise upscaling digital skills and implement automation technologies to streamline business processes," said Lily Phan, Research Director, Future of Work at IDC.

Moreover, 55 per cent of organisations in AP experienced greater numbers of employees quitting their jobs last year, contributing to the shortage which has caused 37 per cent of organisations in AP to delay tech initiatives and 36 per cent to change the direction of tech initiatives.

The report notes that enterprise automation can be a solution for organisations in the public sector and labour-dependent industries such as education, manufacturing, government, healthcare, and hospitality sector to compensate for the labour shortage.

Automation can take up repetitive tasks and allow employees to focus on customised, bespoke requests from clients. Low/no-code platforms can support non-IT employees to automate their tasks and significantly improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.

There are opportunities for automation solution providers to showcase their offerings to organisations with large frontline workforce such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, government, and education. These sectors are severely impacted by talent shortage and will benefit greatly when applying automation solutions to reduce employees’ workload and improve productivity.