Four leaders of Australia's technology workforce have called for a greater focus on developing tech talent from within organizations as well as from outside the industry. They also argued that progress on diversity will have a positive impact on the future success of the IT industry.
Speaking to a panel at SXSW, Karina Parisella, head of technology workforce at ANZ Bank, and David Ranasinghe, chief digital officer at Revenue NSW, said improving employee mobility and building a culture of learning can improve talent retention and meet skills needs.
Meanwhile, Molly Rowe, vice president of people at technology company Recordpoint, detailed how graduate programs can support progress on diversity in technology, while head of recruitment at _nology Australia, Roisin O'Neill, said technology teams You should consider talent planning over the next five to 10 years.
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1. Design to retain talent as well as hire the right people
As head of a 12,000-strong technology workforce at ANZ Bank, Karina Parisella is keenly aware of the recent shift in talent priorities. The trend has been toward people with multiple jobs and companies needing more tech workers than they need, leading to attrition.
To connect with a new generation of workers who are more attuned to passion, purpose, impact and doing meaningful work, Parisella said companies need to look at design for retention rather than just recruitment, which she said “…will give companies the edge.”
Parisella said ANZ had seen success by focusing on the individual interests and goals of early career talent, resulting in an 85% retention rate that outperformed the technology industry. By setting the right priorities early, employees stayed longer and performed higher.
Talent mobility and a learning culture are key to talent retention
Technology leaders are measured in terms of talent mobility at ANZ. The organization aims to have at least 200 technology workers – and up to 500 – taking on temporary-type roles internally with other teams, to improve mobility and team development, while reducing “talent hoarding”.
See: complete A blueprint for building and managing technology teams.
With AI set to automate about 20% to 30% of existing roles each year, Parisella said the shelf life of skills has decreased. She said building a culture of learning is now a critical factor to keep up with skills needs, otherwise organizations will face attrition of their technical staff.
AI used wisely can support the retention of more women in technology
Parisella said AI could be a big opportunity to recruit and retain more women in technology to increase the diversity of the industry, because it could automate some of the most repetitive tasks, such as basic programming, that in the past did not receive the attention of a large enough number of women. Filters.
Women are more likely to be attracted to technology roles if their soft skills or “power skills” strengths become more important to technology teams, including creativity, critical thinking, and working with people.
2. Focus on training employees, honing their skills, and new appointments
NSW Revenue Authority chief digital officer David Ranasinghe said his department's operations and technical staff increased during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the surge in work subsided, there was a question about what the NSW Government should do with this talent.
“We have focused on retraining our employees and upskilling them,” Ranasinghe said. “All the people with the greatest knowledge of our business, our customers’ needs, and passion for technology – we retrained them for roles in technology and other areas of the business.”
Getting technical training and skills in-house has been a major shift in the way the NSW Government manages tech talent, but Ranasinghe said it has been a success. Some workers have been retrained in artificial intelligence and automation, which will help if there is a shortage of skilled workers.
See: Do you want to develop your team? here How to develop the capabilities of the IT team.
Staff are now also given three hours every Friday for training through third parties and online, Ranasinghe said.
“There's no sense in saying go and teach, but do it at the beginning or the end of the day,” Ranasinghe said. “We gave them time to motivate people to invest in their careers.”
Training and retraining to improve technology employee engagement
Revenue NSW previously had a 27% attrition rate for technology workers and relied on contractors. It has turned to a “medium to long-term game” of recruiting selectively and targeting candidates such as graduates who want to progress through the ranks, while investing in training and retention.
Ranasinghe said she is trying multiple strategies to find new employees, including training and recruiting programs.
“We had nurses, physiotherapists and engineers from Brazil; I was amazed by their contribution to the culture and how quickly they picked up on things.
With 1,750 engineers in its own and parallel departments, Ranasinghe said he also measures movement across departments and agencies to provide his team with different professional expertise, from back-office to more customer-facing. Overall, engagement scores increased by 6%.
3. Commit to developing diversity in your technology team
Recordpoint's vice president of people, Molly Rowe, helped increase the diversity of the technology company's 50-person engineering team. Now, 35% of its engineering staff are women, and the team represents 22 backgrounds and ethnicities, well above industry averages.
Rowe said that the organization has succeeded in enhancing female representation in particular through its graduate program.
“We had a great graduate program when I joined four years ago, but we made some adjustments and really used that to enhance a lot of our diversity,” Rowe said.
IT leaders won't always succeed with diversity because of market realities, Rowe said.
“We use a good technology stack of Kubernetes, Terraform, and Azure Cloud, and we can't expect a senior engineer with eight years of experience to also be female all the time,” Rowe said.
But she said implementing these initiatives is valuable to the industry in the long term.
“If we want to make good software that represents people and the people who use it, it needs to be built by people who represent those people,” Rowe said.
Diversity initiatives require leadership and take time
Technology leaders across Australia must realize that building more diverse teams takes time.
“We need to understand that organizational change is not a quick process, it is something you have to commit to up front and you have to be consistent with it over time,” Rowe said. “Yes, you can go ahead and make spot hires, and things will change. But there are a lot of cultural pieces that need to change behind the scenes for diversity to succeed.
The IT department will need to work with other stakeholders, Rowe said.
“Everyone should participate, including your recruiting teams,” Rowe said. “But you need authorization from the highest levels, and (you) need a leader who wants to drive cultural change and is willing to be a stakeholder in it.”
4. Ride the waves of the recruitment market by thinking long-term
Technology recruitment expert Roisin O'Neill, president of specialist recruitment firm _nology Australia, said companies were becoming more cautious about technology recruitment in late 2023. O'Neill said the company was now thinking about what it wanted its technology workforce to look like over the next year. The long-term.
see each other Australian companies view talent as a service To bridge skills gaps.
“The last couple of years were really reactionary and about growth at all costs because money was cheap, but that's not the case now,” O'Neill said. “Companies are now thinking: What do I want my workforce to look like in five to 10 years?” Instead of “What do I need right now at this very moment?”
O'Neill said tech hiring has “…traditionally been a bit of a nightmare,” and waves of firings, hiring and recalibration throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have led to changes in what people care about, how companies hire, what the right talent looks like and what Companies want it.
However, companies are still hiring tech workers as evidenced by the low unemployment rate.
“We are in a recalibration phase; “It's not this huge trend of downsizing and layoffs,” O'Neill said. “It's not that tech jobs aren't important anymore, it's that companies have had to be more careful about what their workforce looks like, and again, it's all about long-term design now.”
Businesses play a role in growing Australia's technology workforce
Organizations and their IT leaders will need to play a role in supporting the long-term future of technology in Australia. Data from the Australian Technology Council shows tech jobs are set to grow from 900,000 jobs in 2023 to 1.2 million jobs in seven years, with a potential shortfall of 200,000 jobs.
The most important opportunity to achieve the jobs goal is for organizations to play a role in upskilling existing workers, whether that's those already working in technology who are being retrained in more modern technology or people who are bringing their non-technology skills back into technology roles, O'Neill said.
