Every company wants to be a tech company. The high street is online. Banking cannot keep up with the pace quickly enough. Healthcare must adapt to new techniques and patient behaviours. There is a reliance on software than ever before.
Recent reports from consultancy firm McKinsey stated that ‘60 percent of all occupations have at least 30 percent of activities that are technically automatable, based on currently demonstrated technologies’. There is no doubt that this will lead to redundancies, but it will also result in the creation of new jobs. McKinsey estimates that this mass digital transformation would create approximately 40 million jobs globally by 2030.
In 1990 the currency trading markets, bigger than the global stock and bond markets combined, were dominated by traders and brokers making multi-million-dollar deals by voice. A phone in each hand, city finance desks devoted to trading US Dollar versus German Mark, consisted of up to 90 people. By 1998 they were all gone; replaced by one piece of software: The Electronic Broking System (EBS). Setup by a conglomerate of banks and in competition with a similar platform created by Thomson Reuters, there was no need for such mass people power anymore. Technology took the reins; swathes of high-flying traders and brokers lost their jobs and this method of automatically trading the currency markets continues today.
What happened to those traders and brokers? They couldn’t beat the technology, so they joined it. Reuters recruited many of these employees after the redundancies, re-trained them, and some are still working there today.
Nowadays companies are more focused on transforming internally, adopting the technology within their organisations. In the 90’s and 00’s they folded; employees went to work from that firm into a more technology focused one. It doesn’t have to be like that now.
- Citibank announced earlier this year that it would look to hire 2,500 more programmers for its investment banking units, with 75% of all trading electronic in 2019.
- H&M, the world’s second largest clothing retailer, closed 160 stores in the UK last year as it restructured to drive customer digital experience.
- Health Secretary Matt Hancock launched NHSX in 2019, a unit designed to bring the benefits of modern technology to every patient and clinician across the health service. This rearrangement is likely to be one of the largest digital transformations that will ever be seen.
‘Modern technology has an incredible potential to change people’s lives for the better and revolutionise the care they receive.’
Matt Hancock (Secretary of State for Health)
Redundancies are not pleasant for the employer or the employee and place financial strain on both parties. Yet for some companies, as a drive to move more digital increases, this seems the only option. They see non-tech employees as without the transferable skills. The problem then falls back to the digital skills gap. As a company looks to digitally transform, it goes into the job market to find software developers, technology analysts, scrum masters and people with years of experience. There simply aren’t enough, we know that, so companies will inevitably lose out to others for those people. The answer – create more!
There are brilliant reasons why retraining people from non-tech departments into tech makes so much sense for companies undergoing digital transformation.
- Retraining your team in tech is so much more cost effective than redundancy and re-hiring.
- The PR significance of offering retraining into the most thriving aspect of a company is huge.
- Employees already know the organisation and have the culture fit.
- Tech sectors are massively under strain from a lack of diversity. Bringing people from non-tech departments into tech teams opens that door to people from different backgrounds and to more women.
_nology takes the ‘Tech’ out of ‘Technology’ to find its name; showing the UK that this isn’t a sector to fear. You can learn to code. We find people with the right aptitude, enthusiasm and mindset to work in this space. We do this externally and can do this internally too. _nology are experts in giving people the skills and awareness to set themselves on a different, more progressive path for the rest of their career. We can allow companies to transform by reshaping the embedded talent within.
How can companies use _nology for internal transformation within tech?
- Internal campaigns and selection to find people from non-tech departments to work within the digital space.
- Bespoke courses aligned to company tech stack and culture.
- Awareness sessions for senior management and other employees, to bring more of an understanding of tech into the company overall.
By keeping up with the pace of change, companies do not have to fire and hire. They can retrain, save money, and transform from the inside out in amazing fashion. _nology makes retraining your team in tech a viable alternative to redundancy.