A Nash Squared/Harvey Nash report that has been tracking the views of technology leaders since the late 1990s has found artificial intelligence has created the UK’s biggest and fastest developing tech skills shortage in over 15 years.
The Nash Squared/Harvey Nash Digital Leadership Report, the largest and longest running survey of technology leadership in the world, found that AI has jumped from the 5th most scarce technology skill in the UK to number one in just 18 months – the steepest and largest jump in any technology skills shortage recorded in the UK for over 15 years.
Almost three times as many UK tech leaders (52 per cent) compared to the previous report (20 per cent) now say they are suffering an AI skills shortage, a 114 per cent jump. In the previous 16 years that Nash Squared/Harvey Nash has tracked technology skills shortages, the next biggest reported jump in the UK was a shortage in Big Data skills, with a jump of just 55 per cent. Even with Cyber skills, for which demand continues to grow, the increase in scarcity has been gradual – rising from 12 per cent in 2009 to 30 per cent this year.
This rapidly developing AI skills shortage is closely linked to a significant growth in investment, with 89 per cent of technology leaders in the UK now reporting they are either piloting AI or investing in small – or large-scale developments. This has skyrocketed from 46 per cent in the previous Digital Leadership Report. Despite this steep rise, over two thirds (69 per cent) of UK tech leaders report they have not received measurable ROI from piloting AI. Larger organisations, however, are faring better in quantifying results: 40 per cent of larger organisations in the UK with technology budgets exceeding $500million report a measurable return.
Although AI investment has helped create this rapidly-developing tech skills shortage, UK technology leaders and their companies still are working on how to respond to the crisis, and the report found that over half of UK companies (59 per cent) are not upskilling in GenAI. But it is not just a skills question: operating models will need to change as the tech team is increasingly supplemented by AI and activities like software development are revolutionised.
“As AI continues to accelerate, the scale of the skills challenge is becoming clear,” said Bev White, CEO of Nash Squared. “UK businesses have a pressing need to ensure their technology teams are equipped with the skills to leverage AI to full effect, or the implementations they are making could fall short. As AI is so new, there is no ‘playbook’ here – it’s about a mix of approaches including formal training where available, reskilling IT staff and staff outside of the traditional IT function to widen the pool, on-the-job experimentation, and knowledge sharing and transfer. This needs to coincide with the development of a new operating model where AI is stitched in. Quite simply, those organisations that rise most effectively to the AI challenge will be in the driving seat to succeed.”
“AI is front and centre of most organisations’ technology plans – and it’s encouraging to see that the UK businesses that are the furthest ahead also have the biggest people need,” added Andy Heyes, Managing Director, Harvey Nash, UK&I and Central Europe. “Rather than killing jobs, AI is changing them and creating new working models. It is also spilling over into a higher likelihood of pay rises, on average, for technology leaders. AI is changing the technology industry and the people dynamics within it, creating new fields of opportunity for those that embrace the challenge.”
