The telecoms industry is crying out for skilled engineers to plug the digital skills gap. Over the last few years, the industry has transformed from traditional voice telephony to a blended industry of IT and telecoms with the proliferation of unified communications solutions.

The use of conferencing and collaboration solutions has increased exponentially since lockdown when everyone worked at home and now continues to exist in either a full time or hybrid capacity. As a result, engineers now need to be skilled in not only voice and mobile but also cloud, networking and conferencing and collaboration solutions such as Microsoft Teams and Xelion.

The talent pool in this area is niche and at present there are more jobs than candidates, so those available can demand high salaries, flexible working, and work for a company with the culture and ethics that they want to. It is hard for companies to recruit and candidates essentially have their pick; companies need to compete with each other to recruit the talent available.

This situation is not sustainable and the fact there are more people than jobs highlight the digital skills gap in the UK is becoming more apparent.

Matt Dykes is Chief Operating Officer of Abzorb

This skills gap in the telecoms industry is one small cog in a much larger wheel of the national digital skills gap that the UK faces. The advancement of technology is moving at a pace faster than the skills we have or are acquiring and this needs to be addressed urgently for the economy’s future.

The digital economy contributes £400m to the UK each day, growing more quickly than the economy itself.

According to new government figures the digital skills gap is estimated to cost the economy £63 billion a year.

As the telecoms and IT industry has merged with the advancement of cloud and communications solutions, the historic division of telecoms and IT is becoming obsolete and now converging. Telecoms should be viewed as part of the technology industry and not as a standalone sector. Education, businesses and the government need to work together to ensure that telecoms is incorporated into the overall technology industry, so people are aware of the career opportunities.

Businesses need to recruit and nurture local talent through apprentices and existing employees to ensure staff are skilled to keep up with the acceleration of technology. They must acknowledge this is an evolving journey and that one off training programmes are inadequate. By training, developing and skilling up your employees you will retain and attract the best talent. It is also important to realise that apprenticeships are not just for new employees but also opportunities for existing staff to gain new skills.

The UK needs to accelerate and drive apprenticeship programmes to plug the digital skills gap. The government has a variety of incentives available, but education and industry need to drive the opportunities and take a wider view of who they recruit. Apprenticeships are not just for school leavers they are open to a range of people, those who maybe are in another career and want to re-train to work in a digital role where their skills are transferable, the unemployed and of course existing employees who want to upskill and develop.

The message its ‘never too late’ must be communicated.

Apprenticeship schemes are a great opportunity for businesses to widen their recruitment pool and ensure that they are a creating a diverse workforce, encouraging applications from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds.

Embrace apprenticeships to close the digital skills gap - Matt Dykes