Partner Article

The Kids Are Not Alright: Bridging the Digital Skills Divide Early

By Angela Hughes, HR Director at Insight UK

With university graduations over and A-level results out tomorrow – marking the end of education for most – many students and school leavers will be looking to embark on the next step of their lives: a career.

As UK employers look to hire a fresh round of talent in the coming weeks, the question remains whether the next generation of workers are adequately armed with the right skills for the modern workplace.

With the rise of the digital age, there’s no denying technical skills are and will be at the core of our professional and personal lives. What this also means is, with robotics and artificial intelligence set to take over a number of manual jobs, we’re presented with an immense opportunity for the next generation to tap into a number of high-skilled jobs, where creativity, decision-making, communications skills, leadership and team-work is imperative.

To ensure the future prosperity of the next generation, it is crucial that we recognise the importance of developing a range of tech skills proficiency.

**The looming skills gap **

With the next generation of the workforce poised to move forward in their lives, it’s worrying to see the skills gap is costing our economy an estimated £63 billion a year. This figure points towards a simple truth – more needs to be done early on to ensure these candidates are properly equipped for the types of roles they’re now finding themselves competing to enter.
But why are we still seeing a shortage of applicants?

Across the board, not enough has been done to foster an awareness of the opportunities that exist. Even more disappointing, we’re still seeing an outdated belief that some groups, such as women, don’t belong in STEM professions. Take the recent news of a Google employee who published an internal memo which argued that a lack of women in top tech jobs was due to biological differences between men and women as a key example of this flawed perception. It is only by engaging a diverse array of young people in STEM that we can hope to protect the future competitiveness of the UK economy.

**The solution? **

Both private and public sector organisations have a big role to play in encouraging the uptake of STEM subjects among the next generation, a lot of the responsibility lies within the partnerships both the private and public sector makes with educational institutions.

In a bid to overcome the skills shortage that is undermining the confidence in the UK’s cyber defences, one example of this is the government’s pledge of £20 million for schools in England to offer school children lesson in cyber security. It demonstrates how collaboration can help foster skills, while protecting themselves, their future employers and the country against cyber-attacks.

With the launch of Tech-levels earlier this year, we saw that building STEM skills is now high on the national agenda. And as we fast progress towards a ‘digital first’ nation, we should be thinking about how to develop skills at an early stage, giving everyone a chance to understand the positive impact this knowledge will have on their lives and future careers is pivotal to closing the digital skills gap. After all, they are no longer a nice-to-have; these skills are absolutely core to the future of the UK economy.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Insight UK .