CompTIA delves into current issues in the workplace, identifying five predominant trends that are expected to impact workers this year. We explore these topics in depth and provide data and expert opinions for handling these emerging issues. Discover more about these workplace trends in our white paper Ahead of the Curve: Five Key Workforce and Learning Trends.
Ahead of the Curve: 5 Key
Workforce and Learning Trends
Identifying emerging trends is especially challenging in an economy still steering through a global pandemic that has created completely new paradigms for how we work, learn and think differently about acquiring talent.
This year, CompTIA finds that a vastly accelerated pace of change is forcing companies to make choices in how they approach learning and development of their workforce, and how they shift talent pipeline strategies for greater access to qualified candidates. How quickly can they transition from business and workforce continuity to business and workforce innovation from survival to building and creating? The COVID-19 pandemic certainly caused intense ripples in the water, but businesses that can pivot to embrace new learning and training modalities will build momentum and lean into the future of work.
In recent research, CompTIA surveyed 400 U.S. human resources and workforce learning professionals about their organizations’ response to the pandemic and their future plans for L&D and talent pipelline activities. We also conducted qualitative interviews with L&D experts and a comprehensive literature review of trend reports and surveys from other authoritative organizations.
Trends to Watch 2021
Below are five key trends we believe will shape talent acquisition strategies, and workforce development and training in the near future.
3
Personalized Learning Made
2
Possible Through Continuous Access
Alternative Learning and Career Pathways Extend and Branch to Reveal New Opportunities
4
DEI Gains Ground as Strategic Initiative
1
AI Becomes Strategic Partner to Enable Building of Human-Digital Teams
Worker Resilience Becomes a Priority for Companies
5
2
State of Tech Employment
12.4 million
2.4% Unemployment rate for IT professions as of February 2021. 1 2X Rate by which technology occupations are projected to grow between 2020-2030. 4 4X
850K Average number of quarterly IT job postings during 2020. 3 80% Global employers that are accelerating the automation of work processes in response to the pandemic. 6
Projected growth of net tech employment for 2021. 2 $11.5 trillion Estimated GDP growth G20 countries will miss out on by 2028 if skills don’t keep pace with new technologies. 5 2025 Projected year in which the average time spent by humans and AI-enabled machines at work will be at parity. 8
7 in 10
HR professionals placing more emphasis on reskilling and upskilling efforts in the year ahead. 9
Increase in the numbers of people seeking their own learning path. 7 3 in 4 Number of HR professionals who support further eliminating the
$2.3 trillion
72%
Employees who think increased technology will “break down hierarchies and lead to more open communication that may advance their careers.” 12
Estimated annual boost to the U.S. economy if racial inequities in income were eliminated. 11
4-year degree barrier for job candidates. 10
1
Worker Resilience Becomes a Priority for Companies
41% hired new staff in IT support, network engineering, software development, data analytics or cybersecurity. 41% have a new emphasis on soft skills for virtual work when hiring tech staff. 55% have new processes for virtual recruiting and interviewing. 62% are likely to hire for new lines or to backfill in IT or technology roles.
The 2021 CompTIA survey of HR leaders confirms what many other surveys have shown — that the pandemic created broad concern about employee work-life balance, workflows and morale. Looking ahead 41% say their companies will have a new emphasis on communication and on emerging tech skills for remote work. 42% expect new efforts on upskilling and reskilling for incumbent employees. Despite persistent discussion about the need for resilient and agile organizations in recent years, the pandemic response revealed that those qualities may have been available all along. Under very difficult circumstances, and in a matter of weeks, companies implemented entirely new operating models. They built socially distanced workspaces, established new workflows for hybrid teams, shifted learning curricula online and pivoted to largescale work-from-home models. While this came at enormous cost for many subsegments of workers, surviving that difficult period together could be the basis of a relationship reset between employer and employee, helping to break down some of the barriers between personal and working lives. While that is a positive takeaway for many, it has also revealed the need for a more resilient worker. To help create resilience, some companies, such as Google, have established “resilience teams” that use tech tools to check on employee wellness and deliver training in mindfulness and communication. 13 Additionally, Udemy’s annual workplace training trends report shows huge jumps in demand for courses around topics such as anxiety management and stress management. 14 Building a resilient workforce is harder than it seems. One point that comes up frequently in discussions about building a resilient workforce is the need for specificity. Trainers and hiring managers need to take care to identify well-defined competencies that lead to resilience.
What can we expect to see with soft skills? In our survey, 41% of HR leaders say their organizations will have a new emphasis on soft skills for IT workers. Although we have seen an increasing demand for soft skills in recent years, it is challenging to define and strategically prioritize. Employers are often asking for a range of higher-order cognitive skills alongside dispositional traits like integrity and work ethic. If anything, the list of desired soft skills has gotten longer during the pandemic, as discussions now also include topics such as self-management and stress tolerance. The pandemic probably made the need for soft skills more acute, particularly people skills that are based in empathy. “At Lumen, we have always supported the whole human with programs and resources to address mental, physical and financial well-being ,” says Marianne Groth, Talent Development Director. “During the pandemic, I feel like we learned even more about each other, and it came from a place of care and understanding. We were all facing similar issues.”
Tech-forward responses to the pandemic.
38% say they offered new or expanding technology stipends for work-from-home employees.
4
DEI Gains Ground as Strategic Initiative
Groth sawmany local and global chapters emerge in Employee Resource Groups (ERG) representing different interests, ethnic backgrounds, leadership goals and minority populations to support DEI efforts at Lumen. “As employees continue to cope with world events, we launched our newest WELL-BEING ERG that is committed to educating employees and engaging them in behaviors that promote their total well-being physical, emotional and financial,” she comments. “Last year, we appointed India Sylvester as our Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) to help us develop and deliver on our efforts.”
2
Over half of HR professionals in our survey expect their organizations will pursue new initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion in the year ahead. The good news is that those initiatives are more likely to be intentional and accountable, with defined metrics to measure progress. This year, the World Economic Forummet in January 2021 to assert its dedication to DEI initiatives. Partnering for Racial Justice in Business, which has commitments from 48 global companies, is “designed to operationalize and coordinate commitments to eradicate racism in the workplace and set new global standards for racial equity in business.” 15 To help complement these efforts, the Nasdaq plans to require listed companies to disclose their diversity efforts, 16 and 80% of corporate boards are planning to tie executive pay to environmental, social and governance metrics including DEI. 17
Despite these strides, businesses are still struggling to operationalize DEI activity. Even with an outpouring of support for these initiatives, skills in this domain are not widely distributed, and many organizations haven’t figured out what metrics to use.
5
HR perceptions of challenges that may inhibit DEI efforts
53 %
49 %
Challenges with training or mentoring
50 %
46 %
48 %
Identifying goals and metrics
37 %
44 %
Converting good intentions to actionable policies and outcomes
48 %
39 %
Setting priorities/determining areas of greatest need
43 %
42 %
37 %
Accountability
43 %
40 %
Getting sufficient buy-in from senior leadership/board of directors
41 % 41 %
34 %
Getting sufficient buy-in from staff
28 %
36 %
Budget or resource allocation issues
24 % 24 %
35 %
27 % 27 %
Large firms
Medium firms
Small firms
Another challenge businesses are facing is the dichotomy that has been created by pandemic working conditions. While the sudden acceleration of remote work has brought many inequalities to the forefront, it has also exacerbated them. A new report from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions documents how variations in the “social determinants of work” — including family responsibilities and access to technology, learning and transportation — create occupational segregation that costs the U.S. economy $2.3 trillion per year. 18 This gap presents a significant obstacle to many L&D initiatives. Learning that doesn’t account for the complexities of how people access it will leave less advantaged workers behind. For companies to truly embrace DEI, learning opportunities need to be continuous and distributed, and accessible anytime and anywhere.
DEI resources from CompTIA
• Diversity and Inclusion Commitment • Diversity and Inclusion Plan for Technology SMBs • A Guide to Hiring Without Unconscious Bias • Diversity Action Plan Workbook • Diversity Index
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Personalized Learning Made Possible Through Continuous Access
3
of workers globally say they are struggling to learn new skills for the digital era. 19
In our survey, over 75% of HR leaders expect to increase the tools they use to personalize talent development activities, with people from large employers much more likely to say it will increase significantly. Overall, we see learning trending toward delivering personalized experiences to employees. However, despite the need for more personalized training, interviews revealed that current learning modalities still aren’t accommodating individual needs or alternate pathways. The pandemic created a shift away from point-in-time training, highlighting the need for creative, more personalized options. Interaction should ideally come in the form of hands-on and experiential learning, which is especially important in technology training or in any workplace shifting to performance- based hiring. A continuous learning approach aligns with making learning a strategic initiative rather than insisting on learning simply to meet a pre-defined requirement. It can enable learning at a greater scale and, not incidentally, it can support DEI initiatives by accommodating the diverse ways individuals access career development opportunities, such as mobile apps, websites, AI-enabled learning programs and various other educational formats. At Lumen, Groth has seen great success using a tool that drives users to action in software or websites to help educate workers on targeted instruction when the need arises. “Formal training classes aren’t needed in every situation,” she comments. “There are many informal methods that can be applied when you’re in the middle of a task. We provide tutorials in the flow of work so employees are supported in real-time and can apply what they learn immediately.”
To be successful, continuous learning must be embedded in a culture that allows a worker to make time for learning when they are ready. Todd Muse, Government Support Manager with BD, sees this frequently with his certification participants. “The number one challenge with those studying for a certification is lack of time. Most have full-time jobs, so finding the time to study and retain newmaterial is difficult.” Personalized learning allows for life and learning to take place simultaneously. Continuous learning technology includes: • Adaptive learning technology to support individual learners’ needs • Learning record software to track a variety of learning experiences • Learning experience platforms that provide on-demand access to content • Social learning platforms to connect employees in personal ways • Employee experience platforms that allow for self service of HR functions
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Organization’s ratings of reskilling/ upskilling importance
More important (net)
About the same
79 %
Less important (net)
68 %
67 %
52 %
39 %
26 %
26 %
16 %
8 %
6 %
6 %
5 %
Overall
Large firms
Medium firms
Small firms
8
Alternative Learning, Talent Pipeline Strategies and Career Pathways Extend and Branch to Reveal New Opportunities
Burning Glass Technologies is one of many organizations pointing to the power of adjacencies to multiply the paths in a career map. With data about what skills exist in the workforce and what is needed, shortcuts to new roles start to reveal themselves. They found that “in all but two of [the emerging disruptive skills], there are at least 200 occupations that represent strong candidates for upskilling.” 20 Employers do have some practical steps available to create more on-ramps and to retain employees for hard- to-fill roles. For example, employers can be less subjective and more specific about what they’re looking for by clearly outlining the knowledge, skills, attributes and behaviors that are needed using a shared lexicon.
4
Employers in our survey continue to seek more on-ramps for new employees and for more effective ways to upskill and reskill current employees. Of these, 57% of senior leaders expect a continued trend toward de-prioritizing the four-year degree. However, another 24% support the trend but have questions given the challenges of countering inertia. Asked what could influence this trend, culture change was cited as one of the biggest contributing factors: 44% say it will happen if organizations are more agile in general, and the same percentage say a significant obstacle is organizational resistance to change. The trend toward retaining and advancing incumbent employees to fill critical roles may be clearer, with 50% of people from large organizations saying they plan new efforts to reskill or upskill technology staff in response to the pandemic.
Second, training has to be connected to real roles. “CompTIA certifications are a requirement for us, but it absolutely benefits our employees by giving them real on-the-job skills,” says Muse. If you simply push skills without application, true learning is less likely to take place.
Factors driving employers to further relax or eliminate 4-year degree requirement for candidates
Factors inhibiting employers from further relaxing or eliminating 4-year degree requirement for candidates
General trend toward workplace agility and focus on skills/performance rather than degrees
44%
43%
General organizational resistance to change
Pool of 4-year degree job candidates, so even if requirement is relaxed most candidates will still have a degree
Sufficient evidence that candidates of all types can be successful
43%
42%
Employer mindset of not wanting to take a chance and belief that 4-year degree candidates are the “safer choice”
42%
40%
Greater commitment internally to on-the-job training
Students/parents having been told for so long that a 4-year degree is necessary
COVID forcing employers and workers to rethink all facets of employment
35%
40%
Lack of support or understanding of credentials and certifications
High cost of 4-year college degrees and more students/parents seeking alternatives
33%
40%
Cycle of hiring managers hiring candidates “like them” with a degree
Employer desire to expand candidate pool (especially in hard-to-fill positions)
33%
38%
9
Technology is emerging that helps extend and multiply career paths. Lumen is using innovative approaches to help match skillsets to job roles. “Our LMS is now able to track certifications and skillsets using a Power App and RPA technology. This gives us an enhanced ability to target talent and illustrate our competencies for strategic partners at any given time,” states Groth. Similarly, CompTIA’s career path planning tool uses data to guide aspiring IT professionals or career changers through the options for entering the field.
Bringing apprenticeships into the information age Apprenticeship, as a work-based learning model, has a proven track record of producing strong results for both employers and workers. • It creates access to opportunity for a more diverse population of workers. • It de-emphasizes the four-year degree and shifts attention to potential and skills. • It is more effective than event-based learning that is decoupled from real-world experiences. • It puts a learning culture into practice and makes it visible. • It improves retention and solves the challenge of where to find people with emerging skills. In 2021 CompTIA launched registered Apprenticeships for Tech, an “earn while you learn” program for techcareer-seekers, registered by the Department of Labor, and built, in partnership with Maher & Maher, to the National Guideline Standards (NGS). These turnkey IT programs are available to employers in any industry and offer apprentices on-the-job learning and job-related technical instruction. To learn more visit: comptia. org/content/lp/apprenticeships-for-tech
Tech hiring consideration for non-4-year-degree holders
Likely to accept candidates w/o 4-yr degree
Unlikely or unsure
Possibly / depends
Net likely + possibly
IT support / help desk positions
17%
40%
43%
83%
Data analyst / database positions
21%
47%
33%
80%
Software developer / web developer positions
25%
42%
33%
75%
Cybersecurity positions
27%
40%
34%
73%
Network engineers
28%
41%
31%
73%
CIO / IT management
31%
37%
33%
69%
10
AI Becomes Strategic Partner to Enable Building of Human-Digital Teams
5
AI and related automating technologies
46 %
Over 80% of respondents in our survey expect AI to have either a moderate or significantly increased impact on HR in the year ahead, and people in senior roles were much more likely to say it will have a significant impact. A majority of companies are either piloting or actively using AI in candidate screening, onboarding, competency assessment and career planning, Several other surveys confirm this trend. For example, a World Economic Forum survey found that more than 50% of global businesses have accelerated automation in response to the pandemic, and they estimate that by 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal. 21 Meanwhile, the workers who are brought on by HR are increasingly part of a growing teamwork model which is often referred to as intelligent automation or the augmented workforce. Deloitte anticipates the growth of “superteams” of humans and technology that use complementary skills to create new ways of working. 22 Similarly, Citrix envisions the rise of “powered productives” who are “fueled by a flourishing partnership between people and technology.” 23
35 %
19 %
Significant impact
Moderate impact
Little to no impact
11
AI and related automating technologies
Net actively in use + exploring
No action taken
Exploring or piloting
Actively in use
Example of AI-enabled technology or data use case
Candidate competency assessments
29%
39%
32%
71%
Interview scheduling / candidate engagement
29%
39%
31%
71%
Employee self-service (ESS) tools, e.g. smart virtual assistant
29%
40%
31%
71%
Onboarding
36%
38%
26%
64%
Employee career planning, e.g. upskilling assessments, smart job role matching, career pathway planning
32%
43%
25%
68%
Candidate sourcing and initial screening
31%
45%
25%
69%
But, there’s another angle that needs exploring. AI certainly offers intriguing potential, but there are those who worry that their role will be eliminated. In fact, accelerating automation, combined with the pandemic, could actually hit the most vulnerable workers with a two-fold impact. It’s a common debate: • Howmany new jobs will emerge to replace the old? • Howmuch thought are we applying in the creative destruction of jobs? • How will workers make the transition to new job roles? Losses can be offset somewhat by some workers climbing the tech stack ahead of automation to respond to the demand for more innovation. For example, new technologies create the need for support roles and positions emerge.
“AI can be scary,” comments Groth. “Some fear AI will take jobs away, yet it opens opportunities for people to do different work. For example, an RPA programmer is a job that didn’t exist before, but it does now.”
Once the results are shown to be successful, we can expect more resources to be diverted to developing similar technology. But workers will only be equipped to collaborate with teammates — both human and digital —with effective support from L&D. This results in a situation where companies must build not only emerging technology skills but also focus on developing the ability to interpret, explain, adapt, consider other perspectives and align tasks with big-picture goals. To be successful, business leaders need to bring L&D in on key decisions rather than just relying on it as a cost center that trains workers on the features of new technology.
12
Where are the next skills gaps coming from?
What’s on the horizon?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) As more work processes become digitized, they become candidates for software that ties processes together and automates them. Gartner predicts the RPA software sector will grow to $2 billion this year. 24 Model drift AI systems need updating or they risk becoming less reliable over time. Model drift occurs when newly generated data influencing an AI looks less like the data it was trained on. (Presumably, the way we work during a pandemic has been generating a lot of data variation.) IT professionals will need to learn to spot and correct for model drift. No code/low code Software that enables building new digital services with minimal coding know-how has mostly been offered to individuals creating unique applications. But as more enterprise applications emerge that allow users to customize and optimize the software they use without the direct support of IT, it will impact the work of L&D.
In our survey, 74% of large firms are likely to hire for IT or technology roles in 2021. Looking further on the horizon, new high-demand skills could emerge, driven by these forces: • Advanced infrastructure and hardware create new roles and specializations such as IoT network architect, 5G engineer, edge computing integrator, cloud security specialist, drone automation engineer or XR content specialist. • Further advances in artificial intelligence and data create new roles and specializations such as automation architect, machine learning analyst, AI ethicist, data scientist or data loss prevention security engineer.
• Digital transformation creates industry transitions using fintech, agtech, edtech, greentech, proptech, etc.
• People skills for an internet context will take on a new importance as distributed teams rely more on remote collaboration. • Health, safety and employee well-being are new priorities since the pandemic. That may lead to new roles devoted to those issues and new subjects that L&D will be responsible for addressing with all workers.
FinOps This is the emerging term for cloud financial
management, which will become more important as cloud services become both significant cost centers and strategic necessities. FinOps specialists tune a company’s cloud resources to minimize expense and maximize the speed and effectiveness of its operations. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) A large number of global companies are operationalizing corporate social responsibility principles by committing to ESG metrics in diversity, pay equity, worker health and social impact. Many ESG plans specify metrics in upskilling, reskilling and retention. As ESG transitions from theory to practice, it could influence how L&D participates in cultivating a corporate culture.
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Where Do We Go From Here?
It should also be noted that the trends we have identified more clearly describe the conditions of forced necessity rather than prescriptions for how to respond. Upgrading technology is often the least challenging part. Much more challenging is synchronizing those upgrades with the required strategy changes, process changes and upskilling. The last year has shown that the one universal choice facing every business is to expect the unexpected. That’s necessary for survival and for being ready to accelerate through the curve. Our research shows that companies that are serious about expecting the unexpected are emphasizing worker resilience, proactive DEI, continuous learning, ever more extensive career pathways and human-digital teamwork.
Identifying trends is all well and good, but what are you supposed to do with it? First and foremost, it’s important to remember that the above trends don’t operate independently. They overlap, reinforce or even act as a rate limit on one another. For example, progress on DEI is achieved when there are better career pathways, but automation may exacerbate existing inequalities in some fields. Continuous learning supports worker resilience, but some roles have clearer pathways than others to emerging opportunities. To effectively support the L&D efforts of your workforce, you need to evaluate your needs, industry trends, workforce skills and potential for adaptability. Because our survey of 400 HR leaders covered the U.S. economy broadly, it offers a generalized perspective of their challenges and plans. On the ground, those challenges and plans will differ by industry and by job role.
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Credits
1 CompTIA, CompTIA Tech Jobs Report, March 2021 2 CompTIA, CompTIA Cyberstates 2021, March 2021 3 ibid 4 ibid 5 Accenture, It’s Learning. Just Not As We Know It, September 18, 2018 6 World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Forum 2020, October 2020 7 ibid 8 ibid 9 CompTIA, unpublished survey of U.S. HR professionals, January 2021 10 ibid 11 National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Race and the Work of the Future: Advancing Workforce Equity In the United States, November 12, 2020 12 Citrix, Talent Accelerator, 2020 13 CNBC, Google Is Tackling Mental Health Challenges Among Employees Through ‘Resilience Training’ Videos, Nov. 27, 2020 14 Udemy, The 2020 Workplace Learning Trends Report, November 2020 15 World Economic Forum, World Economic Forum Launches Coalition to Tackle Racism in the Workplace, January 25, 2021 16 Nasdaq, Nasdaq to Advance Diversity Through New Proposed Listing Requirements, December 1, 2020 17 Willis Towers Watson, 4 in 5 Companies Planning to Change ESG Measures in Executive Pay Plans Over Next 3 Years, Willis Towers Watson Survey Finds, December 9, 2020 18 National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Race and the Work of the Future: Advancing Workforce Equity in the United States, November 12, 2020 19 Randstad, Randstad Workmonitor: 2020 Report, December 2020 20 Burning Glass, Skills of Mass Disruption: Pinpointing the 10 Most Disruptive Skills in Tech, December 2020 21 World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report 2020, October 20, 2020 22 Deloitte, 2021 Global Human Capital Trends, December 9, 2020 23 Citrix, Work 2035: How People and Technology Will Pioneer NewWays of Working, September 19, 2020 24 Gartner, Gartner Says Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software Revenue to Reach Nearly $2 Billion in 2021, September 21, 2020
Content development by Robert McGuire of McGuire Editorial Content Marketing Agency.
About CompTIA
The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a leading voice and advocate for the $5 trillion global information technology ecosystem; and the estimated 75 million industry and tech professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers the world’s economy. Through education, training, certifications, advocacy, philanthropy, and market research, CompTIA is the hub for advancing the tech industry and its workforce. CompTIA is the world’s leading vendor-neutral IT certifying body with more than 2.8 million certifications earned through rigorous, performance-based exams. CompTIA sets the standard for preparing entry-level candidates through expert-level professionals to succeed at all stages of their career in technology. Through CompTIA’s philanthropic arm, CompTIA develops innovative on-ramps and career pathways to expand opportunities to populations that traditionally have been under-represented in the information technology workforce.
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