Coronavirus has exposed the folly of Australia’s economic planning

Australia’s workforce is going through unprecedented disruption, but this is being felt unevenly. The skills that you hold right now will determine whether this pandemic up-ends your life entirely, or is simply making for frightening evening news.

For those in the former camp, government assistance is forthcoming. This is a fantastic thing, but is often nowhere close to a full replacement of earnings. We know these people are in the hospitality, retail and tourism sectors, to name just a few who have felt the impact first.

So who’s in the latter camp? The ones who’s skills remain in demand no matter the circumstance?

The answer shouldn’t be surprising. It’s those with technical qualifications such as computer science and cybersecurity. LinkedIn’s hiring data released a few weeks ago clearly displays the disparity in fortunes between those with technical skills and those working in more traditional sectors. While education, consumer goods and Recreation & Travel all suffered significant losses the Software & IT Services sector has seen a massive 17.3 per cent increase in hiring.

It’s long been asserted that data is the new “lifeblood” of any business. This recession has put this to the acid test, and come out positive. Data is king. How well you manage it, protect it and understand it can now determine whether a business succeeds or fails. This is what is driving the demand for jobs now and into the future.

 An opportunity to redress a great Australian misallocation of human talent:

The coronavirus pandemic and the healthy government response to this have conspired to create something they probably never intended: the motivation and the means to re-skill.

Many people turn away from this sector thinking that coding is not for them. There seems to be a general fear of programming as if it were some mystical black art. We have to constantly reassure people that it's just like any other skill and they can learn basic programming.

As it turns out, most people can learn the basics of coding and make a career transition into this area. We are seeing people come to the data profession from backgrounds such as retail, hospitality, arts, sales, marketing and finance. The different perspectives and abilities these people are bringing to the profession is exciting, as they identify different ways to solve business problems using these new technologies.

Overcoming this myth is crucial to achieve the macro-economic objective of increasing the competitiveness of Australian business on the world stage. If data is king, we need to be doing more to be prepared to compete.

But even with the motivation and the means, we need to see a few things change in order to make this vision happen.

First we must recognise getting an online certificate or doing a 2 week course is not enough to completely change your career. There’s a lot more to it. The difference between the practical skills that are needed now and the “theory” of a discipline like cybersecurity or data science can be enormous. We’ve found that you need 3 months of intensive practical skills training, support from mentors, a network of peers, career coaching, and connections into industry. Plus the focus, motivation and commitment to get through it.

Secondly, we need to see the industry getting more involved. At the Institute of Data, we’ve created a course like this with UTS and other industry partners that uses purely industry trainers, not teachers or academics, to help re-skill the recently redundant workforce. These trainers have both the skills and real world corporate experience to help students to navigate a brand new work culture and environment. With more industry partnerships we can continue to create pathways for graduates into employment.

Finally, we need to extend this retraining opportunity into the existing workforce. Before it’s too late and redundancy packages are paid out, we should be retraining and upskilling team members to improve capability. By adding data and cyber skills to your existing team, you create the capacity to compete more effectively, improve margins, deal with uncertain market conditions and protect your most important asset. This applies to all companies at every scale, including government and the not-for-profit sector.

The UpSkill Now! program, in partnership with UTS, is offering up to 90 per cent scholarships for individuals made redundant this year to retrain to data science or cybersecurity. So we’re already working hard to help retrain people that are right now out of work due to COVID-19 and looking to take charge of their own destiny. With additional corporate and government partnerships we can do even more.

The feeling of insecurity is a frightening thing, and can destabilise economies quickly. The path forward for our nation couldn’t be more clear. There is already a large gap between the jobs available in cybersecurity and data science, and that gap will only get bigger. Those who take proactive action and upskill during this trying time will find themselves far better to weather the next economic downturn, but there’s more than simple self-interest at stake. The coronavirus pandemic could be our only opportunity to address a fundamental imbalance in our workforce, and prevent great hardship through structural unemployment later.

Andrew Campbell is Executive Director at the Institute of Data