Strategies for Building A High-Performance Tech Workforce In 2024
The greatest change witnessed in the 21st century is the exponential transformation across all spectrums of life, ushered in by the advancement of technology. The adoption of digital transformation at an unprecedented pace has created an evolving business environment driven by disruptive technologies, market shifts, and a changing nature of work. The success of any business during this time primarily depends on its ability to build a workforce equipped with the right skills, the right set of behaviors, and the ability to embrace a digital mindset.
The 2023 Global Technology Leadership Study by Deloitte indicates that over 50% of executives anticipate their digital transformation initiatives in the next two years will concentrate on creating new tech-enabled products, services, and/or platforms. However, paradoxically, only 13% of surveyed employers express confidence in their ability to recruit and retain the essential tech talent needed to create said offerings.
Talent is one of the highest expenses/investments in an organization’s budget, yet most enterprises do not have a clearly articulated strategy on how to build and maintain it effectively. Here we will look at some strategies that can be implemented to build a capable and sustainable workforce that can boost the growth of the business.
Anticipating Your Tech Talent
The first step towards understanding your talent requirements would be to have a clearly defined strategy for the tech-enabled products/platforms/services that you intend to build/develop. Translate that into skills required to fulfill those requirements. Utilizing generative AI tools, analyze project requirements and match them with resource availability by evaluating the skill sets of the employees based on their qualifications, training, and applied experience. Later, assess the gaps in your existing workforce and articulate a strategy and an execution plan on how to overcome it. Further, utilizing these tools for continuous learning, adapting to changing market dynamics, and understanding customer preferences and organizational limitations can refine your talent development strategies.
Attracting Tech Talent
Apart from competitive compensation and benefits, one of their top priorities would be opportunities to work on cutting-edge technologies or projects that can offer sufficient challenges. A positive work environment, offering flexibility in focusing on results rather than methods, including features like flexible hours, hybrid work setups, talent nurturing, and a growth-oriented talent model supporting diverse career paths via Individual Development Plans (IDPs), is attractive to tech professionals.
Tech talent is also drawn to organizations with a compelling purpose beyond profits, providing a sense of purpose for using their skills to make a positive impact. A well-articulated Employee Value Proposition (EVP) helps them connect with the corporate purpose on a personal level.
Retaining Tech Talent
One major way to retain tech talent is to ensure that they succeed in their defined roles. They are motivated by roles that provide them vertical or horizontal growth where they can utilize their core skills. Therefore, provide them with an environment where they can unleash their potential while doing meaningful and challenging work.
This would mean providing them with all the learning and development to enable this and working with them to give insights and opportunities available to help them shape their careers by way of dovetailing their Individual Development Plans (IDP) with the business strategy through coaching and mentoring programs.
Developing Tech Talent
With the advancement of emerging technologies like AI, there is a major shift in the industry's approach towards evolving a model of continuous learning for the skills required to keep up and evolve these systems. Apart from using traditional learning methodologies, hyper-personalization of learning across platforms using generative AI tools based on their professional/personal requirements would enhance their learning experience and help them learn new skills. Facilitating learners to access content at their own pace and convenience, using immersive methods on mobile devices, would enhance employee engagement.
Another strategy for developing tech talent would be to create a culture of innovation by allowing employees to collaborate on new ideas in emerging technologies by way of internal projects/POCs. These can help in challenging themselves, unearthing new talent, applying their learnings, and developing expertise. They may also help in creating offerings in these technologies which can be incorporated as a part of your go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
As is the case with any other investment, tech talent too carries both risks and rewards. However, the rewards far outweigh the risks. As Richard Branson stated, “Train people well enough so that they can leave, treat them well so they don’t want to.” It is worth the investment in providing the necessary environment to develop their skills, as it would not only keep them motivated and engaged in the present but also lay the foundation for preparing the workforce of the future.
