Layoffs in IT industry are inevitable given the technological changes and socio-political changes we are witnessing. 89% of respondents to a survey carried out by CIEL last month corroborate with this. They see this as an irreversible change in the employment markets for the IT industry in India. This may sound depressing, but all is not lost. There are enough opportunities to be leveraged upon.
Why is it a big deal?
Typically, organizations asked the IT companies to automate their work processes by designing and developing an IT Application and then, making it available over a network. They had to maintain the infrastructure and the application so that business runs as usual. They saved dollars, increased speed and improved customer satisfaction. However, the landscape has changed in the last 5 years with the advent of smart phones, cloud computing and social networks. Customers transact business round the clock, communicate often and expect instantaneous results. Similarly, companies now have the access to a myriad of IT applications, do not need to own it and maintain an IT infrastructure by themselves. Our IT industry has geared up well to this new phenomenon of social, mobility, analytics and cloud. They have learnt these technologies and deployed them at work well.
Now, we are witnessing the next wave of change where artificial intelligence and big data are playing an important role in the computing process. New platforms have emerged which are helping the IT folks to create and deploy an IT application much faster and simpler than ever before. Automated tools such as bots and a range of automation platforms are reducing human efforts. Moreover, they are delighting customers by letting them be in charge of the transactions that they want to carry out with an organization. These disruptions are making many jobs redundant. Our estimates indicate loss of half a million jobs over 3 years. Most people didn’t see this coming.
Socio-political changes around the world are putting pressures on Governments in the West to review their policies of outsourcing work beyond their borders and allowing people outside their countries to carry out work there. Immigration policies are being relooked. Hence, companies in India have to find other ways of generating demand and continuously climbing the value chain. CIEL’s study shows the factors responsible for the potential job losses to be the Policies of Governments in the West, declining demands of outsourcing IT work and the advent of automation tools. Only 33% of the respondents anticipated this phenomenon.
The survey shows, most people (67%) believe, this event will get taken care to a significant extent by the normal attrition that happens in the industry. 44% believe that companies will shed the weak performers in this process. Similarly, 44% believe that the change has come faster than expected. However, a significant part of the working population in IT (56%) believe that the lay-offs are being discussed a lot and is causing panic.
New opportunities
New technologies such as augmented reality, robotics and big data are making waves in various industry sectors. They are no more restricted to sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, energy and financial services. We are seeing them applied in industry sectors like entertainment, hospitality and various other service sectors. The way we live our life is changing, right from the way we cook our food, keep in contact with the others, entertain ourselves, use appliances at home to educate our kids and take care of our health and wealth. Each of these have been transformed significantly in the last few years and have created millions of opportunities for our IT sector. Our IT folks need to reskill themselves quickly to seize upon these occasions and make hay while the sun shines.
Redeployment opportunities
Some of the IT folks can migrate to the other sectors of the economy because each of them is deploying digital technologies in a significant way. Right from their processes to interact with customers to internal work processes, business planning and analysis we will see applications of mobility and IT applications. Organizations will increase headcount in their IT and Technology functions to create the right applications, analyse the day-to-day transactions to derive insights and protect the information and wisdom from any threat. 44% of the respondents of the survey believe that upto a quarter of the laid off people can be absorbed in other industry sectors.
All is not lost. We have a way ahead to a bright future.
