Almost 71% of companies in 2021 invested in digital technologies, new organizational formulas and new business models: and requests for personnel went in this direction with the demand for basic digital skills for visual and multimedia communication for 2,8, 60,5 million professional profiles sought, equal to XNUMX% of the total expected revenue. He claims it the 2021 survey of the Excelsior Information System of Unioncamere and Anpal on the combination of work and digital skills, emphasizing however that the difficulties in finding the right personnel grow as the skills required increase.
Furthermore, 42% of companies adopt integrated investment strategies that combine these three areas of digital transformation. In the implementation of the digital transition, the acquisition of candidates with suitable skills assumes strategic importance.
Work and digital skills: the mismatch between job demand and supply
The difficulty of finding the qualifications with (basic) digital skills is one of the effects of the mismatch of labor supply and demand, i.e. the phenomenon whereby companies find it difficult to find the profiles they need.
In 2021, companies requested basic digital skills for visual and multimedia communication from 2,8 million professional profiles sought (equal to 60,5% of total revenue), skills related to the use of mathematical and IT languages and methods to 2,3 million positions (50,5%) and management skills of innovative 4.0 solutions to 1,7 million revenues (36,4%).
Furthermore, more than a fifth of planned entries are required with a high degree of importance to possess basic skills for the management and production of visual and multimedia communication tools, while mathematical-IT skills and the management of innovative solutions are considered very significant, respectively, for 16% and 10,9% of planned revenues.
Request for eskill by degree of importance
But the difficulties in finding them intensify as the degree of importance attributed to the skill required to carry out the profession increases. In particular, for the basic digital skills it goes from a difficulty of finding equal to 34,9% in the case of a request for expertise to 37,8% for the degree of high importance; for mathematical-IT skills the gap is much wider (from 36% to 40,3%), while for 4.0 skills the difficulty varies from 37% to 40,9%.
To manage the technological and managerial challenges that companies have to face, according to the 2021 survey of the Excelsior Information System of Unioncamere and Anpal, it is strategic to have combined eskills between them. The demand for the eskill mix (i.e. the mastery of at least two of the three digital skills) involved 646 positions: the digital skills mix is most required of graduates (44,1%) - particularly in STEM subjects such as electronic engineering and information (84,5%) and mathematics, physics and computer sciences (73,5%) – compared to graduates (16%).
For these mixes of skills, the difficulty of finding them reaches 40% of the demand, which in the context of specialist professions is concentrated in the figures linked to the implementation of digitization in the corporate organization, such as electrical engineers (77,9% of revenues for which the skill mix is considered strategic is difficult to find), IT system designers and administrators (65,0%) and software analysts and designers (64,2%). The figure relating to doctors (64,6%) and primary school teachers (63,6%) also appears to be high, also due to the effect of the pandemic. With reference instead to the technical professions, the mix of digital skills is difficult to find even for programmer technicians (68,5%), application expert technicians (62,7%), mechanical technicians (52%) and industrial designers (48,4, XNUMX%).
Digital work and skills: difficulty of finding by geographic area
The highest values for criticality in searches for candidates with digital skills are concentrated in North East coast , starting with Friuli-Venezia Giulia (49,6%) and Veneto (45,3%), followed by some regions of the North West, such as Piedmont (41,1%) and Liguria (40,1%) and central Italy, such as Umbria (45,4%) and Marche (41,0%). At the provincial level, the most difficulties are reported in Gorizia (54%), Terni (51,5%) and Belluno (50,3%). Immediately close to the top 10, Caltanissetta (46,7%), ahead of the provinces of the South and Islands.
The North East presents the greatest mismatch for the ability to apply 4.0 technologies (51,1%), with peaks in Trentino Alto Adige (52,4%) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (52,3%). Among the provinces, the companies located in the province of Terni (67,4%) show the greatest difficulties, followed by Rieti (64,6%) and Belluno (64,4%). Finally, it is once again Caltanissetta (in 44th place, with critical issues found in 44,9% of cases) that appears first in the standings among the representatives of the South.
