Propel London's Salary Survey
Article Date: 1st Aug 2011
Digital talent can be tricky but it is the key to future business growthCheck out Propel London's Salary Survey here
Digital talent is fueling global economic recovery and growth. This is reflected in Propel London’s latest salary survey: the demand for digital talent outstrips supply and employers are willing to bid competitively to secure this talent within their organisations.
When reading the salary survey, it is astonishing to overlay the broader economic context: a landscape of post-recession recovery, where traditional media businesses have faltered and where iconic high street retail brands like TJ Hughes and Woolworths are shutting up shop for good.
Meanwhile, back inside the digital industry bubble, we’ve barely noticed that there has been a recession at all. According to a McKinsey report earlier this year, the Internet is responsible for 23% of the UK’s GDP over the last five years, and for creating 1.2m jobs in France in the last fifteen; in the US, a quarter of all venture capital is being invested in Internet ventures and the global ecommerce market is worth $3 trillion; if the Internet were a sector, it would be bigger than Utilities or Agriculture - if it were a country, its GDP would be larger than that of Canada, and growing faster than that of Brazil.
A workforce’s ability to mine digital data, to interpret consumer insights, to work the campaign management machines, to model the ROI, to acquire and convert customers online, to keep the customer spending online, and to measure the ARPU – these are fast-becoming core competencies within business.
Yet there is a sting in the digital talent tail: business leaders think digital resides within IT or the lower echelons of marketing. They don’t yet see digital as sufficiently business critical to have board-level representation, or indeed to equip their managers with the wherewithal to manage digital talent. And that’s if they can find the talent in the first place.
Digital talent is extremely difficult to nurture. Most digital specialists are acquired (through external recruitment), rather than grown organically. Little is done to embed or transfer these skills within the organisation, and often digital teams are silo’d and shoved in the darkest corner of the building. As a consequence, new digital hires invariably leave within less than twelve months, and staff churn rates are astronomically high – especially across the agency sector (I heard 80% from one large agency network).
Meanwhile, managers complain of the arrogance of Generation Y, and of their inability to communicate and engage with their non-digital colleagues; the sheer ambition of the digital natives – Deloitte reports that 64% of them want to own a business – leaves their superiors fearing for their jobs. Senior managers are displaced by results-hungry twenty-something’s with no agency or people management experience. And before long, agencies are being resigned – or agencies are resigning clients - because their young clients can’t set realistic business or communications objectives. Welcome to the quagmire of digital talent management!
So what’s the solution? With training budgets a rarity post-recession, business leaders will be forced to find strategic funds to implement much needed organisational and cultural change, so that digital talent can be properly understood and nurtured; so that these young adults – many of whom, lest we forget, spent most of their adolescent years indoors with a games console in one hand and a smartphone in the other – can learn business etiquette, marketing best practice, and can adapt to working in teams, using tried and tested ‘analogue’ communication skills.
Historians are heralding the Internet revolution as bigger and more impactful than the industrial revolution. And certainly the Internet has changed consumers’ lives irreparably, and for the better. But this seismic impact will only be felt by those businesses that embrace digital change. Ultimately, future business success and growth will come down to effective digital talent management strategies.
Amanda Davie is founder and managing director of digital management consulting firm Reform: http://www.reformdigital.com
