Author: Amanda

click to enlarge

According to REC/KPMG’s latest report, contractor availability is, declining at a rapid rate since October 2014 and nearly half of all SMEs across the UK are struggling to recruit the right IT staff. Even with a 0.3% growth in the beginning of 2015, the lack of skilled workers is affecting the speed of economic recovery.

Research published recently by CompTIA, an IT skills and training specialist shows that 45% of UK businesses have productivity issues due to an “extensive” shortage of IT talent. 27% of businesses believed that the IT skills gaps is slowing speed to market and 26% reported that it is impeding innovation and new ideas. The IT skills shortage shows no signs of abating as 28% of IT executives said that they plan to hire more IT staff this coming year, a figure that has doubled from 14% in 2014.

The skills shortage will be detrimental to the British economy unless action is taken. The five areas of recruitment that will suffer into 2016 will be:

• Project and Business Delays and Failure
• Wasted time RE: hiring, project completion
• Unfilled jobs due to lower skilled and under qualified candidates
• Re-training
• Increased wage inflation

For more information on the consequences of the skills shortage, visit Recruitment Training Group

The event kicked off with Mike Restivo’s discussion on “Evolution of Recruitment”.

In a short period of time the nature of how recruitment operates has seen an exponential change. As Mike explained, these use to be a recruiter’s best friend.

The biggest change to ever grace the recruitment industry is moving towards software to create a database of clients and candidates. Long gone are the days of scouring through multiple filo-faxes or in worst cases, scrap pieces of paper looking for the contact details of ‘John Smith’ with the credentials that match what an employer is looking for. Technology has developed in such a way that with a few button presses here and a couple keywords, any and all candidates with the desired qualifications are at your disposal.

Throughout Mike’s discussion, he returned to the number one cause of how the recruitment industry is evolving. The catalyst and biggest influencer being technology, from what use to be a telephone only industry many years ago is seeing a massive boost in technology usage. Whether it is for storing clients and candidates details to communicating with candidates, technology is playing an important part in the growth of the recruitment industry.

The recruitment industry is seeing major growth in revenue with “85% of respondents meeting or exceeded their revenue goals in 2014, continuing a steady rate of growth from 2011 to the present. 93% expect a revenue increase in 2015, including 31% who expect an increase of 25% or more” explained Mike.

Dominic Harvey, agreed with Mike findings and with the notion that technology is pushing the industry forward, especially in the IT sector stating there has been a “1.7% annual increase in IT salary over 2008 to 2014…there is a high demand for IT specialist skills”. With the increase in technology it is a no brainer that there would be an increase for skills to cater for the new technology.

Dominic also brought some intriguing details with him regarding where people are working and explaining that there is now more people “working outside of London and becoming more of a reality for permanent employment”. This can be seen by 41% of recruitments being placed in the South East of England compared to 28% being placed in London. We could deduce that many IT sector workers can complete a large majority of their tasks remotely, working from home without the need to consider travelling to and from their place of work, giving more flexibility on where an employee can work. Another factor that has been raised is the expected salary in locations. Using permanent Web developers as an example, Dominic explained that the “expected salary [for a web developer] is £41,000; excluding London which is £40,000 but the London premium has gone down so the impact of working in London is not as strong.” Overall, the expect salaries for position outside of London are increasing.

As technology changes so do the desired skills. IT sector skills seem to fluctuate at a rapid speed and a desired skill a few months ago can be overshadowed by new technological needs. Dominic addressed the current growing skills are web developing skills in:

• PHP
• HTML
• Agile
• Python
• IOS
• Android

Previous years saw Oracle, SAP and Unix as the desired skills for web developers but they have dropped considerably. It is no surprise that IOS and Android skills have skyrocketed as more people are using mobile technology. But the ever evolving IT industry will change that.

What is interesting and what Mike pointed out is that the UK was slow to adopt mobile technology compared to the rest of the world.

Dominic also states the benefits that the IT sector has gained from technology, which are:

• Optimised recruitment efficiency and effectiveness
• Optimisation and growth in mobile recruitment – as more people are using the Internet for search for their next role and more convenient methods of browsing the Internet are at our fingertips such as Tablets and Mobile Phones.
• Optimisation for CRM

It is clear to see that technology and the IT sector go hand in hand. The development in technology has enabled a more effective and efficient way for consultants to working with clients and candidates allowing for a more streamlined and quick process to meet specific needs. The IT sector is extremely success even despite the economical downturn, seeing a year on year rise in revenue and an increased demand in IT skills. With quicker and more powerful technologies, employees are no longer hindered by geographical locations for their next role and remote working give employees more options for employment.

The one aspect that has remained the same is monetary incentive but for permanent candidates extra benefits could be the deciding factor as they want to feel looked after. Contractors on the other hand would like new opportunities to improve their skills.

As we become more dependent on technology, the IT sector will see a fruitful future.

Schools, colleges and universities must look beyond what they are currently doing well and identify the idea that will reshape education

Education is the leading force that is accelerating development globally and is the only answer to providing sustainable growth in the coming centuries. 

There has been a change in paradigm of how students learn and teachers teach due to the exploitation of modern computer, network and learning infrastructure. 

A successful future educational initiative will require ongoing, long-term efforts that can lead to new goals, approaches and new ways of thinking. Researchers term this as ‘second-order change’: the type of substantive change that drives deep impact. 

A fundamental change in the education process is to take out the factory production approach to having a process that enables individual needs and opportunities that makes it relevant, and connect them to the global happenings. 

Modern-day students challenge their teachers to be innovative and to make the learning environments more exciting, flexible and rewarding.

This generation’s students inhabit a borderless world offering limitless connection, data and mobility. They can choose to access knowledge and collaborate on a global scale.  The expectation of education delivery is to match this aspiration through usage of technology. 

Connecting state schools to the internet has to be a key initiative in every part of the developing world, with an ambition bigger than improving education. Irrespective of the remoteness and parity of growth, students quickly adapt to the technology and learn with gusto.

This also provides an opportunity to involve life for families and communities through the way young people learn, because learning forums are so much more open, transparent and collaborative.

Technology can be used more creatively to move beyond classroom walls and can transform education with completely new ways to learn new skills.

A transformative education initiative should fundamentally change the way in which it is imparted and not try to use technology to just enable the old ways of learning. 

It should start from a vision that guarantees student success with full participation of teachers and parents. This will help schools drive change by improving student learning and bridging parity, to increase student engagement and skills development that will ultimately aid in global transformation.

There are a number of initiatives in education where a lot of infrastructure is provided with a hope that it will improve education. Infrastructure without content, without experimenting with new ways of teaching and without enabling collaboration will be a futile attempt. 

Infrastructure is important, but empowerment and transformational change management is paramount. Futuristic education transformation should bring the teachers to first shed the inhibition to change from being a teacher to a facilitator. And a sustained programme needs to be planned and sustained. 

Education’s new avatar will not be popular with everyone. The traditionalists will resist ideas that erode historic school structures. Teacher associations will not appreciate having their importance shrunk by technology. 

Others may even question the way in which students are evaluated through tests than can be replaced by a continuous monitoring of learning understanding. All this and more will be challenges.

But schools and teachers that are given an opportunity and empowerment will welcome such a change. Disrupting the school or education should start from a classroom – the way they arrange teaching and learning – and then build upwards. 

Successfully introducing innovative ways of teaching should sustain them and vitalise the school system to be successful, and more disruption will follow success.

The key focus must be on achievement of the education and development objective and not on promoting shiny gadgets. This can be achieved by the usage of interchangeable delivery of education through a multitude of gadgets and should not be dependent on one. 

There are two key questions to ask: how can education systems assimilate this into programme design and delivery in order to improve efficiency, control costs and expand the delivery of education to larger numbers of people; and how will the convergence of communications technologies affect the potential for providing improved learner support? 

We are in the era of vast numbers of open online courses which allow students globally to learn what they are interested in and at their own pace. This trend itself is a harbinger for things to come. 

Providing education in new and unconventional ways is only one of a number of solutions, but it is through innovation that challenges of improved efficiencies, lower costs, increased accessibility and greater success in achieving development goals through education can be met.

These disruptions in education provide an opportunity to revisit how to cultivate children’s learning and futures in a way that is based on what is known today. 

The transition won’t be easy, especially for complex government-run institutions like education, but with a huge looming deficit and only potential relief in sight, what choice is there? It is a risk worth taking.

Source: Information Age

Retailers are no stranger to the benefits of using technology either. Whether it is displaying the products to customers, providing information and the ability to pay for said product in an incredibly short process. Compared to travel to a brick and mortar store and trawling through the many options the store has to find out they don't have the product you want, to then visit another store and repeat the process again, you can't deny that technology has changed the way we shop. 

Retailers should factor in that customers have more means to buy online now than they use to and have the abililty to browse and buy no matter where they are or time of day.

Making the purchasing life of a customer easier isn't the only bright side to technology in retail. Retailers can use the information from their customers to work out current trends and behaviours. With this information they can react to the ever changing customer needs more quickly. Technology for retailers opens the doors for the use of Big Data. This source of data is seen to be extremely valuable and should be a tool that everyone in retail has in their arsenal which can help in discovering and analysing new information.

"Every enterprise needs to fully understand big data – what it is to them, what is does for them, what it means to them –and the potential of data-driven marketing, starting today. Don’t wait. Waiting will only delay the inevitable and make it even more difficult to unravel the confusion.

Once you start tackling big data, you’ll learn what you don’t know, and you’ll be inspired to take steps to resolve any problems. Best of all, you can use the insights you gather at each step along the way to start improving your customer engagement strategies; that way, you’ll put big data marketing to work and immediately add more value to both your offline and online interactions." Forbes

Therefore, if retailers are not currently doing so, they should embrace technology as a part of their strategy. 

For more information, read Tech is key player in retail strategy for 2016 from Raconteur. 

Source: Raconteur