Outsourcing Toolkit

Story: Microsoft warns of 'acute' UK skills shortage

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The dwindling number of IT graduates in the UK should act as a wake-up call for companies to take action to educate their current employees before declaring a "skills shortage".

With around 70 per cent of the world’s business still running upon ageing legacy COBOL systems, many enterprises have come to rely on older legacy specialists who have the knowledge and experience to run them. As such, it is not surprising that there has been much speculation about these workers reaching retirement age and so creating an impending skills crisis.

While this may seem to be a daunting situation, companies must act now to overcome this problem. Even though the age of a legacy COBOL worker tends to be higher than most, they have on average ten years before they reach retirement. Companies should see this as an opportunity to map out their legacy applications portfolio, identifying the systems, and therefore the skills, they will need in the future. Not only will this allow firms to recruit appropriate workers in plenty of time, but also transition in-house skills accordingly. Combined with initiatives to breakdown the IT silos that so often exist between mainframes and contemporary systems, companies will be able to minimise any significant loss of knowledge when older staff members retire and ensure a smooth transition of IT skills in the future.

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