Talent scout: it’s time to close the UK’s tech skills gap

But despite the growing cohort of newly available workers, the gripe among founders in search of developer support is a familiar one: you just can’t get the staff.

Tech redundancies in the UK haven’t been as severe as those across the Atlantic, but our talent ecosystem is in flux. While major brands have been handing out P45s, professionals themselves are reportedly leaving staff jobs in search of companies that align with their own sense of purpose.

Even so, there is still a dearth of tech talent in Britain – a problem. It is impeding the progress of founders creating businesses of the future, and placing a yoke on UK growth.

The demand is there. Here are a few ways we might increase the supply.

The first step in closing the skills gap is to attract more talent from abroad. To do this, we must communicate around the qualities that make the UK an enticing place for founders to set up shop – and for employees to reach their ambitions.

Consider the relationship that’s flourishing between Britain’s academic institutions and its finance hubs. Of the top ten global universities, four are here, and most of those are within spitting distance of the country’s financial centre. This makes for a simple interface between research and capital. No other country has such a close-knit ecosystem of academia and financiers.

In recent years, we have also become better at touting attributes like this abroad. We can improve further. The government’s High Potential Individual visa grants anyone who graduated from one of the fifty top-ranked universities a two-year stay. Policies like this are a good start, but we must do more to encourage STEM graduates to start their careers in the UK.

The solution isn’t just to entice more fresh-faced graduates into the UK labour market. It’s about creating the conditions for those in their thirties and forties to recast themselves into new careers. This trend stretches beyond our borders.

A post-pandemic global study by PwC found an appetite for new challenges. For instance, 40 per cent of workers polled successfully improved their digital skills during the pandemic; 77 percent are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain; and 74 per cent view training as a matter of personal responsibility.

The second half of this equation is creating incentives for workers to learn and re-learn. Organisations could encourage employees to stick around and re-train if owners were more willing to share the spoils.

The government’s Employee Ownership Trusts scheme is enabling employers to sell shares to workers without paying capital gains tax. This exudes ambition, but a cultural shift is required. Driven professionals are more likely to stay if there is a sense of purpose, but even more so when good performance shows up in their bank balances. Beyond this, it’s a virtuous move that makes life better for those who work for you.

When thinking about the tech talent gap in the UK, some overlook the fact that the issue is one of supply and demand. The UK – even in the current downturn – punches above its weight when it comes to the amount of investment placed in start-ups and scaleups here. We are lucky to live and work in an environment where demand for tech workers is high. The correct equilibrium is hard to engineer, but it’s in our interest to try.