Infosys Talent Radar 2019: How the Best Companies get the Skills They Need to Thrive in the Digital Era
Talent in the Digital Age
Organizations struggle to find the right talent to meet digital business needs. New technical skills alone are not enough to create successful transformation projects. Workforce development needs to evolve more holistically so that soft skills can integrate with talent transformation leading practices, and sustained.
In mid-2019 Infosys Knowledge Institute conducted a worldwide study and surveyed over 1,000 senior management executives globally, at companies with over US $1 billion in annual revenue to understand the demand drivers of digital talent, the rising demand for skills, the skill gaps and what leading companies are doing to address it.
It’s a not a talent war, it’s a famine
Meeting the Need for Talent ‒ Talent Readiness Index:
Download the reportInfosys analyzed five key areas on how well respondent companies were positioned to meet their talent needs: planning, hiring, training, incentives and workplace to create a Talent Readiness Index score. The Talent Readiness Index stratifies enterprises into their respective clusters – Followers, Challengers, Leaders
- Followers: Have fewer approaches to develop talent and don’t measure their results or effectiveness.
- Challengers: Invest heavily in anywhere, anytime training, they still rely on traditional sources for talent acquisition.
- Leaders: Build lifelong learning culture, and use it to retain top talent.
The Talent Readiness Index stratifies companies into three clusters:
The rising demand for skills.
The digital initiatives require people with sophisticated technical skills; and with more focus on creating superior customer experiences, soft skills have become just as important as technical ones.
Technical skills in demand for digital initiatives
Collaboration skills are more valued than are individual skills
Skills Gap Severity Depends on Demand
Regardless of industry or initiative, the skills in greatest demand among our respondents, but hardest to find, are adaptability, communication and analytics. Those rated as less demanded but also in short supply include artificial intelligence, automation, agile and DevOps, and empathy.
Barriers to Talent Transformation
Both hard and soft skills are increasingly demanded for projects and operations, yet HR organizations struggle to provide them with the timeliness, quality and scale needed. We looked at two perspectives on the barriers that prevent sufficient demand-supply match of talent.
Tangible barriers to reskilling the workforce
Many companies do not appreciate the importance of learnability and empathy
Moving from Talent Famine to Feast
We identified four approaches with best practices and actionable recommendations that can help companies prepare themselves to address the talent needs of today and prepare for those of the future.
- Cast a wider net for new hires
- Reskill and redeploy in-house talent
- Engage temporary workers and gig economy strategically
- Align organizational structure to evolving business needs
Survey audience at a glance
