HR Zone: Cognizant’s UK, Ireland and Nordics Head Blogs About the Emerging Global Labor Market

“The issue of the shortage of a skilled workforce continues to hit the headlines across Europe, with the European Commission suggesting that there will be 900,000 vacancies for IT-related roles by 2015,” writes Sanjiv Gossain. “The number of ‘digital jobs’—jobs based around IT—is growing by about 100,000 every year, yet the number of skilled IT graduates in the West is failing to keep pace.”

In a wider business context, Gossain notes, many companies are now no longer limited to a local labor force or having to relocate staff from elsewhere; instead they can access the right people with the right skills at the right time wherever those people may be based. “It is fair to say that technology has not only transformed the world of business, but also completely disrupted the usual way of working,” he writes. “The increasing adoption of disruptive technologies into mainstream business practice means that companies can find and integrate the right skills from an increasingly growing pool of global candidates wherever they may be based.”

According to Gossain, while globalization is not a new phenomenon, it is now reaching into almost every aspect of business. “Today, end-to-end activities are performed globally as if they were done in one location by a self-contained workforce. Virtualization, not only with technology, but also with people (the “anywhere, anytime worker”) and business models (increased outsourcing of key processes and sub-processes) is key to this transition…The global labor market is closer than one thinks,” he writes.

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