IT departments and teams: a challenge to be met between talents and skills

Attracting and recruiting, developing skills and retaining talent: this is the number two priority to be addressed, after cybersecurity, for the more than 600 IT directors and information system managers of organisations (public and private) with more than 50 employees in the public and private sector who participated in the 2024 edition of the Cegos Group's International Barometer, a study conducted in France, Germany and Italy.

There are so many possible interpretations of how the role of the Chief Information Officer has changed and is changing, and the comment of Emanuela Pignataro, Head of Business Transformation & Head of Execution at Cegos Italia, who reiterates a concept that is well known but perhaps not yet properly rooted and shared, is very indicative in this regard. "IT departments have changed profoundly over the last 20 years and if before they were mainly responsible for back-office management tools, today they are at the heart of the company, as digital technology permeates the entire organisation and its value chain. The technical skills of the Cio are obviously still in demand,' the manager goes on to explain, 'but now these figures must also position themselves as partners, supporting rapid transformations that are crucial for business performance. And it is an evolution that requires them to further develop their transversal skills, with the aim of working closely with other departments and combining a strategic role with an operational position, so as to provide rapid, cross-functional support to the organisation'.

Many, as mentioned, were the findings that emerged from the study and among these stand out first of all the percentages that snapshot the figure of the I.I.C. with respect to age (50% are between 35 and 49 years old) and company seniority (53% of Italian respondents have less than 10 years of seniority) and the number of collaborators managed (the largest slice, 42%, works with a team of between 10 and 20 people). Very interesting are the answers outlining the main qualities of a good Chief Information Officer: the most frequently mentioned item is technical skills (this applies to 56% of Italian IT managers), followed by strategic vision (52%, again with regard to the national sample) and the ability to innovate (45%). Knowing how to combine these three aptitudes is thus seen as a key quality of a good IT manager, while soft skills (interpersonal, listening and persuasive skills, common sense, lucidity) are at a relatively low level in all three countries surveyed, due to the predominance of technological evolutions that IT departments must constantly integrate and support. Equally significant is the composition of the answers framing the difficulties encountered by these figures on a daily basis, with 67% of the respondents indicating (due to their experience in their own company) a more technical than strategic view of the function, 58% stating that they have to deal with constant changes and reorganisations, and 56% that they have to cope with recruitment and retention problems in order to have the right resources available.

While talent management is definitely an important topic for It managers, the level of confidence drops dramatically when compared to the stated awareness of facing cybersecurity challenges when it comes to attracting, hiring and then retaining talent and upgrading their skills, with less than a quarter of the sample of managers surveyed saying they are ready to handle this set of tasks without a problem. On the other hand, 66 per cent of the CIIs confirm their intention to upskill their teams while retaining their current positions, while 41 per cent say they are willing to train their IT staff through reskilling paths so that they can take on new positions that are in high demand today, such as Data Scientist and Cybersecurity Manager.

Finally, the last part of the study put under the magnifying glass the development of IT teams' skills and thus the subject of refresher initiatives and programmes (76% of the Cio declared that their organisation offers training courses dedicated to IT professionals on staff). When it comes to technical training over the next two years, the vast majority of respondents (between 85% and 90%) focused on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data analysis, in that order. In terms of transversal and behavioural skills, on the other hand, the two most common items (cited in 66% and 62% of cases respectively) concern the willingness to train their teams on project and people management, considering this ability an imperative in the light of a context strongly accelerated by technological change and the need to interact on specific projects with all lines of business. In terms of soft skills, specifically, IT managements require their teams to be trained mainly on creativity and innovation (75% of the total number of managers affirmed this) and spirit of initiative and entrepreneurship (70%), and they consider the concept of "learning to learn" to be fundamental for the development of skills (68% of the managers interviewed affirmed this), an expectation linked to the need to evolve certain profiles from technical experts to managers capable of transmitting and delegating their knowledge within the group..