Initial situation:
“In eight years, there will be a shortage of almost 40,000 ICT specialists in Switzerland.” Headlines like this have been read more and more often in Switzerland in recent years. According to the Institute for Economic Studies Basel (IWSB), the need for additional IT professionals is expected to increase to around 120,000 in 2030. The reasons for this include the retirement of existing staff, migration and the digital transformation that is currently taking place in Switzerland and will be in the near future.
All ICT professions in Switzerland are affected by this, but the area of IT security stands out in particular with increased demand.
If you look at the statistics listed below, it quickly becomes clear that the need for IT specialists in Switzerland is increasing massively compared to the average for all professional fields.
Challenge to Swiss companies
Such an increase in demand for IT specialists and the problem of a lack of supply from the Swiss education system are fundamentally not promising news for our Swiss companies. It is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to get the right resources to implement their own IT projects as efficiently and quickly as possible. The domestic workforce potential is almost exhausted. According to an in-depth analysis by the Observatory for Skilled Labor Shortages, there are indications that, despite the already very high wages, even the ability to recruit within the framework of the free movement of people is reaching its limits. The situation could continue to worsen in the future.
However, the last 2.5 years have also offered us new opportunities and possibilities and shown how modern work can develop and how entrenched thought patterns can be quickly broken.
The pandemic has given the classic office model a big kick in the butt and made widespread home office and remote work the “new normal”. In addition, today’s encrypted connections make it child’s play for companies to work securely from abroad. This “game changer” opens up a whole new way of thinking, also with regard to the globalization of IT services and remote personnel.
This is supported by the modern way of working in the IT world, such as daily standup meetings, flat organizations and targeted work in sprints with clear goals, which has also made location dependency in the teams a minor matter.
The question that Swiss companies will have to ask themselves in the future will be:
How can remote ICT specialists be embedded in my company as effectively, flexibly and smoothly as possible?