Digital transformation is on the rise and businesses are transitioning to cloud-based technologies to deliver a seamless experience to their customers. Apparently, that’s the only way to avoid lagging behind the competition. According to Gartner, 75% of all databases will be on the cloud by the end of 2022, as data and analytics capabilities drive the trend forward.
However, the transition isn’t going to be easy if organizations don’t find the solution to close the skill gap needed to implement cloud-based technology. The lack of cloud workers to fill the requirement of roles like developers, engineers, architects, and strategists is a massive challenge that businesses are facing today, especially as the demand for cloud-based solutions has increased since the pandemic.
This increase in demand and shortage of skills poses many challenges to organizations leading to a decline in business performance and a forced halt in digital transformation projects. The inability to leverage dynamic data to compete on a global scale hampers the growth and progress of organizations.
So, how do enterprises resolve the issue of the shortage of technical skills needed to adapt to emerging cloud-based technologies? Let’s take a look at 5 ways to address the skill shortage!
Invest in Training Programs
One of the key aspects of managing the cloud skill gap is not just need for workforce who can manage software, infrastructure in cloud and place workloads but manage the costs too. One way to address the skill shortage is to offer training programs focused on cloud skills to existing people in the industry enabling them to upskill and fill the gap. Many companies like Amazon web services, Google and IBM have already started doing it to accelerate the process of equipping people with the necessary skills.
Another step is to incorporate technical training in the curriculum and educate students about these skills so that they are well prepared to enter the digitized workforce. The more the universities, businesses and cloud providers partner up around cloud strategy, the sooner will the skill gaps be filled. This in turn will make it more effective for the implementation of cloud technologies across the organizations.
Provide Hands-on Experience
Just providing a cloud certification is not always enough. When we talk about cloud curriculum, it doesn’t imply creating an e-learning platform and awarding everyone who takes the program with cloud certification. These training programs have to make sure that the skills being taught are sufficient to prepare people for technical careers in cloud computing. As much as certfication and the right of academic accolade matters, certification alone isn’t sufficient to instill an engineering-led thinking that is most essential to thrive in the modern workplace. A curriculum that also provides hands-on experience or opportunity for professionals to apply the learnings is the way to go.
The added issue of remote work due to covid-19 further enhances the importance of creating a common experience for employees, building a virtual team connected through advanced communications and use of tools for effective collaboration. Measures like grouping people together in cohorts led by learning coaches also help bind the workforce and retain skilled workers.
Attract and Retain Talent Who are Aligned with your Business Goals
Ensuring successful digital transformation would require organizations to hire technologists with DevOps skills who can align business workloads and the cloud. When your IT team is experienced in developing business-oriented software, the process of digitization will be a lot more efficient.
As long as organizations focus on upskilling their employees, and training them to use cloud tools, the skills shortage won’t be among the major issues they face in their way to scale their business.
While retaining talent is one of the key objectives of HR teams across organizations, hiring people with wide variety of cloud skills is absolutely necessary.
Prioritize Cloud Security
Companies deploying cloud-based solutions cannot neglect the security aspect of the implementation. They must find and ensure that they hire technologists who are skilled enough to keep the cloud data of the organizations safe and secure.
Many organizations as part of upskilling train employees with the right skills needed to become a cloud security engineer.
Encourage a Mindset Shift
Without a shift in the mindset, it’s almost impossible to bring a significant shift in the culture of the organization embracing innovation and prioritizing the cloud. So, what kind of mindset do we need? One that’s comfortable with experimenting, rewards teams for creative coding and allows for small failures in the journey which in turn serve as learnings for future. Code will be all set to become the path for open-ended problem solving.
Organizations need to emphasize the use of modern tools and processes in their training to developers to enable iterative, agile experimentation that increases individual creativity.
Additionally, giving due recognition to employees who learn the technical skills either by giving them credentials or any other form of recognition is a great way to encourage further upskilling of the employees.
A Cloud-Based Workforce of the Future
Digital modernization isn’t a temporary trend that would pass but a culture that we slowly need to adapt to. Hence, the growing popularity of cloud computing which already finds its applications across all facets of business as well as personal lives.
What the market needs today is people with cloud expertise and technical experience to close the skill gap across several domains, including engineering, database management, programming, development, security, and analytics. Hence the right approach for organizations to thrive in the Digital modernization era is to create and retain a workforce equipped with cloud skills and have a strategy to evolve as per the evolving needs of the customers.
The primary focus must be around providing the right form of training, mentoring and make it a critical component for employees looking to upskill. For the training programs to be at its effective best, the mandate must be across organization and must be a top-down approach.
Organizations must also look at partnering with the right cloud service providers who can focus on simplying cloud migration, improve customer journey, upskill the workforce and empower teams to use tools that will facilitate cloud modernization efforts. These cloud service providers can help bridge the technology gap by providing the right skilled workforce to organizations facing cloud issues.
(The author is Mr. Amit Gupta, Founder and CEO, Rapyder Cloud Solutions and the views expressed in this article are his own)
