Market instability, talent pool shakeups, and an emphasis on user experience will change tech labor dynamics in 2023. As IT executives battle with talent shortages and seek to enhance distributed workforces, citizen developers will become more prevalent, and automation will boost productivity.
After a record-breaking in-demand year for IT personnel with the most clout in the room, the 2022 economic slowdown caused a stir. Some corporations felt the impact of a weakening economy, resulting in headline-grabbing layoffs at some of the industry’s largest names.
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If the economic slump continues, the trend may swing in favor of employers as worried IT workers avoid job hopping.
Despite this, corporations are anticipated to boost their investments in technology and, as a result, the teams that research, create, install, monitor, protect, and manage such systems. It is doubtful that the tables will totally swing in favor of businesses this year unless complete solutions to the talent shortage become available.
Here are four technology workforce trends to look out for in 2023:
Shift in technology workforce strategy
No C-suite executive or board of directors wants to hear the words “market unpredictability,” but that is the truth moving into 2023. According to Christopher Gilchrist, principal research analyst at Forrester, some firms would try to adjust their tech workforce plans in response to reduce possible risks.
“Companies will almost certainly overcorrect on their conservatism if they forsake and diverge from their existing tech labor approach,” Gilchrist said. “These are the companies that will design workforce strategies and take decisions that reduce short-term workforce hazard at the expense of longer-term talent risks.”
To prevent self-inflicted personnel issues, firms should remain persistent in their hiring strategy, even if cuts or slowdowns are required, added Gilchrist.
The breadth of skills favored
The battle to fill in-demand IT roles may be suffocating for HR managers. Attrition in the technology industry can result in skill shortages, decreased production, and a loss of business expertise.
According to 2022 Sinequa statistics, which polled 1,000 IT managers, seven in ten indicated the Great Resignation contributed to a loss of organizational expertise, making it harder for existing workers to identify and access vital information.
According to Gilchrist, the requirement for talented employees, combined with a depleted talent pool and the long-term repercussions of high attrition, will encourage more tech executives to seek people with a variety of abilities rather than a specialization.
Many businesses have turned to upskilling to keep ambitious staff, but the practice may also help teams fill gaps.
Gilchrist anticipates that areas such as energy and food will remain cyclical, with IT hiring slowing this year.
“Seek for firms that are more vulnerable to pricing fluctuations and utilize hiring freezes to reduce future tech staff growth and compress current tech personnel depending on forecasted growth,” Gilchrist added.
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Automation remains the focal point
The user expectations that come from consumer-facing technology are one of business IT’s most formidable adversaries. As more Gen Z digital natives enter the workforce, they want their workplace tools to be as simple to use as the technology they grew up with.
This may encourage engineers to develop and deploy technologies that support and curate user-friendly experiences.
Automation is one method by which firms may continue to improve their employees’ experiences. Automation, particularly for firms that have adopted hybrid work, may streamline procedures and enable a scattered workforce.
“With so many individuals changing occupations to better meet their requirements holistically, companies needed to engage in automation – automating workflows to support remote onboarding, task and process automation to allow workers new to their employees to focus on outcomes rather than procedure,” according to Amy Loomis, research VP of Future of Work at IDC.
Automating laborious, repetitive processes boosts worker productivity, which has shown to be a priority for executives during an economic downturn.
Citizen developers are on the rise
Citizen developers, also known as business technologists, have grown increasingly frequent in the enterprise arena with each passing year, but 2023 will be the year they take center stage.
Businesses are having difficulty finding IT talent at the same time as more Gen Z digital natives and computer-knowledgeable individuals are entering the workforce and low-code technology is developing.
In less technologically demanding businesses, such as the government, nearly one-quarter of staff were classified as business technologists. According to Gartner data, that figure was closer to 50% in businesses largely reliant on IT, such as energy, in 2022.
According to Hill, this includes removing corporate hurdles such as laws banning cross-departmental initiatives and broadening the concept of teams for HR managers. It is vital to redefine responsibilities, tasks, and who is permitted to work on IT operations.
“Typically, HR managers have employed software providers, consulting companies, and contractors as part of their digital delivery system, and we’re kind of proposing that they go beyond the traditional partners and tap into unconventional talent sources and talent populations,” Hill said.
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