Gallup and AWS collaborated to undertake the largest international survey of its kind, questioning nearly 30,000 workers and 9,300 hiring managers in 19 countries, to obtain a deeper understanding of the value of digital skills and how they can improve lives.
In a statement, Amazon said Gallup also examined Lightcast (previously Emsi Burning Glass) data on all advertised job vacancies in 33 countries from mid-2021 to mid-2022 to determine the talents most in demand by today’s employers. The 2022 AWS Global Digital Skills Study: The Economic Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Workforce now has the full conclusions.
As technology continues to revolutionise people’s lives and workplaces, new research from Gallup and Amazon Web Services (AWS) shines light on the enormous economic, innovation, and performance benefits that investing in advanced digital skills for workers can deliver.
The study delivers five critical insights as part of Amazon’s continued promise to give free cloud computing skills training to 29 million individuals by 2025.
Digital skills yield big economic benefits
Workers and industries benefit from income and revenue premiums generated by digital skills. This quickly adds up to significant global value. According to the research, sophisticated digital skills alone—such as cloud architecture and software development—raise annual global GDP by an estimated $6.3 trillion through increasing worker income and productivity.
Furthermore, organisations that use digital skills at a high-level report annual revenues that are around 168 per cent higher than companies that do not use digital skills. Workers perceive the advantages as well. Workers with intermediate skills, such as comprehending cloud principles and the ability to utilise tools like drag-and-drop websites, earned 40 per cent more than those with basic digital skills, such as email and word processing, across the 19 nations studied. Individuals with advanced capabilities, such as programming languages, saw a 65 per cent increase in salaries.
Workers’ benefits increase as digital skills knowledge increases
Employees understand the importance of digital skills, and nearly all (98 per cent) believe that learning a digital skill has benefited their career. More than three-quarters of digital workers (77 per cent) are “very” or “very” interested in learning new digital skills. This is encouraging news for staff who continue to cite difficulty in obtaining qualified candidates. When it comes to occupations needing digital skills, more than two-thirds of businesses (70 per cent) cite hiring issues.
Furthermore, the poll demonstrates a significant relationship between digital skill mastery and increases in employee job satisfaction. Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of workers with advanced digital skills consider their employment to be near-ideal, compared to fewer than half (43 per cent) of individuals with basic digital abilities. Similarly, workers with advanced digital skills reported greater job stability (7 per cent vs. 48 per cent).
Investing in digital skills delivers big dividends for businesses
Additionally, studies show that businesses that use cloud, digital, and advanced digital skills routinely beat their non-digital competitors. Businesses are nearly 50 per cent more likely to report inventing in the last two years when advanced digital workers—such as cloud engineers and software developers—are employed than when merely using basic digital technologies like email and messaging applications. A rate five times greater than businesses that do not use the cloud and do not plan to adopt it in the future was reported by 66 per cent of businesses that operate all or most of their operations in the cloud during the previous two years.
5G, cryptocurrency and the Metaverse are here to stay
While the majority of firms currently acknowledge that finding candidates with the digital skills they require is difficult, they must also get ready for future hiring difficulties. There are still fresh, disruptive technologies being developed. When asked to rate the possibility that 10 such emerging technologies will become a standard component of their business in the future on a scale of zero to 10, 65 per cent of worldwide employers gave at least one technology an eight or higher. More than half (52 per cent) think that using numerous technologies will become the norm, and 11 per cent say that their organisation will eventually use all 10 of these.
