Shaping the IT Workforce
of the Future
Diana Bersohn
Diana Bersohn
Managing Director, Accenture Strategy
Executive insights on Shaping the IT Workforce of the Future
So CIOs are critically important to the change that needs to take place across the IT workforce today.
The changes that need to take place are not incremental; they’re transformational. And so a CIO
needs to be at the heart of driving those types of changes, particularly to meet the need of a digital
environment.
What does the advent of digital technologies mean for the IT workforce?
So the advent of digital technologies is having a significant impact on the IT workforce. It’s bringing
an unprecedented demand for new skills for technology workers, as well as new ways of working,
both within the IT organization and across the broader ecosystem.
Why is the talent ecosystem expanding?
The talent ecosystem is evolving and highly complex. Managing talent is much more complex than
ever before. CIOs need to manage not only the IT workers within the IT organization but the broader
technology workforce across the organization.
So today’s workforce is highly mobile and globally distributed and that requires a whole new way of
thinking about how to manage talent and how to manage that new workforce and how to source
talent for that workforce.
What do CIOs need to do in order to manage the demands of digital on their workforce?
CIOs need to take a number of actions in order to react to the changing needs of the workforce in
a digital world. First, they need to reinvent the IT organization. They need to redefine IT’s role as an
orchestrator and driver of innovation working with the business.
CIOs also need to adapt to a changing ecosystem. They need to fix legacy workforce issues and upskill
talent and capabilities to be able to deliver multi-speed IT.
CIOs need to create a new IT workforce mindset. They need to go beyond incremental fixes to the
workforce and make transformational changes. They need to create a strategic workforce plan
in order to upskill existing staff and source new talent. They also need to embrace a new value
proposition to be able to attract the highly selective workforce of the future.
Why is it not easy being a CIO today?
CIOs have challenges that are unprecedented today. Never before have they been dealing with such
a complex talent environment, nor have we seen such new types of pressures being put upon IT to
deliver to new digital requirements and meet the needs of the future.
CIOs need to bring both business acumen and deep technology skills to their role and then within
their organizations, they now need to balance the skills trifecta across business, digital and
technology capabilities.
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