Bangalore: The rapid upgradation of technology and lack of training resources has led to IT skills gap among employees. According to new research published by CompTIA, eight in 10 organizations say their business operations are impacted by gaps in the skill sets of their information technology staffs. The study ‘State of the IT Skills Gap’ shows that a high percentage of employers (93 percent) say that there is an overall skills gap, the difference between existing and desired skill levels, among their IT staff according to a report in computer.org

"Even as the importance of technology to business success grows exponentially, few organizations are exactly or even very close to where they want to be with technology utilization and staff skill levels," said Terry Erdle, executive vice president, skills certification, CompTIA. "These gaps are hampering business success."

The study which surveyed 502 U.S. IT and business managers between December and January revealed that the widening gap in IT skills had impacts on staff productivity (41 percent), customer service and engagement (32 percent) and security (31 percent), time to market is also one of the problematic areas. Profitability is also affected with 23 percent of small companies being impacted by skill gap as compared to 15 percent of large and medium firms.

Most of the companies pointed out that employees lack skills in core areas such as security, data storage, refreshing aging equipment, improving network infrastructure and disaster recovery, and business continuity; and emerging areas such as business process automation, mobility, collaboration, and virtualization.

Nearly six in 10organizations (57 percent) are planning to train or retrain their existing staff in areas where skills are lacking to address their IT skills gap challenges.

"The expected commitment to more education is an encouraging sign," Erdle said. "IT professionals have a strong propensity for lifelong learning and skills enhancement, so the large majority will welcome the opportunity to broaden their knowledge. An investment in new IT education and training will deliver strong return on investment to the business's bottom line.”