The world is experiencing a lack of digital skills and talent, and SA is in particularly dire straits.
This was the message from Jarred Cinman, MD of digital marketing and advertising agency Native VML, speaking at the ITWeb Digital Economy Summit 2015 at The Forum, Bryanston, yesterday.
Cinman presented research into the workforce habits of "millennials" - people reaching young adulthood around the year 2000 - who are forming a growing percentage of the young workforce, and suggested ways for businesses to turn around the skills deficit.
"We have a profound lack of skilled people in this industry. We hear the same complaints everywhere in the world, in fact. But millennials are entering the workforce in vast numbers, and we need to understand them better," not expect them to conform to our established ways of doing business.
Millennials are motivated differently from older employees, Cinman noted. They expect to move jobs more frequently, valuing career development over compensation.
"The perception is that they lack loyalty and have a short attention span," but that's because the perception is coloured by traditional, usually older, management, he added. "They will be loyal if you can give them room to grow."
Unfortunately, the lack of skills in SA can be blamed on an education system which is struggling even to keep up with traditional skills, never mind the new generation of digital skills, Cinman said.
"South African education, from primary, through secondary and tertiary, and into corporate skills development, is terrible and getting worse. The employees available to us are increasingly mediocre."
Cinman cited ratings by the World Economic Forum, which show SA's ICT capability ranking 70th in the world and dropping, and our maths and science education rock bottom.
He called for action by the industry to restore competitiveness to SA's ICT skills, with three key drivers to improve skills. First, youth need to be encouraged to value ongoing training and mastery, rather than expect instant promotion and unearned career advancement. Second, improved understanding of digital careers: "Our young workforce doesn't even know what jobs are out there, because their teachers don't know about them either."
And lastly, formalised teaching in businesses, to ensure the skills are generated organically, and then retained as long as possible.
"In theory, we have advantages - South Africa is English-speaking, in the same time-zone as Europe, and we are still seen as the gateway for business in Africa. The problem is not unsolvable, but we can't think someone else will solve it for us. We have a huge surplus of qualified graduates, without the skills to actually contribute to businesses in a digital world. So learning has to happen on the job: we have to take responsibility," he concluded.
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