How to plug the IoT skills gap

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has brought about an overnight dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for many sec­tors, cre­at­ing a sud­den need for every­thing to be con­nect­ed. Enter the inter­net of things (IoT). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to the expo­nen­tial need for spe­cial­ists in cloud com­put­ing and data sci­ence, there is also an IoT skills gap that needs to be filled.

“COVID-19 is the rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion IoT has been wait­ing for,” says Richard Robin­son, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Econ­sul­tan­cy. “At the heart of this, for many, is the IoT and adop­tion of the 168-hour week, when cus­tomers can pur­chase a prod­uct and con­sume con­tent when­ev­er they like.

“IoT is the answer to the math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion of how to bend time to deliv­er goods and ser­vices just in time or in real time with every cus­tomer con­tact.”

Out­sourc­ing and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­ny Capi­ta found  70 per cent of busi­ness­es said IoT was rel­e­vant to them, but more than three-quar­ters had an IoT skills gap in their work­force and could­n’t cap­i­talise on it. This aligns with research by LinkedIn that found cloud com­put­ing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and user expe­ri­ence design, which are all relat­ed to IoT, were in the top ten most in-demand hard skills in 2020.

What’s driving the IoT skills gap?

“Tra­di­tion­al devel­op­ers have some of the skills required, but IoT’s com­plex­i­ty demands more and helps to cre­ate the cur­rent skills gap,” says Tom Can­ning, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al sales in IoT and devices at Canon­i­cal. “The real­i­ty is, in an indus­try as dynam­ic and fast-chang­ing as IoT, it’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict more than a few years into the future.” He also believes most com­pa­nies are not in a posi­tion to hire at scale just yet, but this won’t last long.

“Sim­i­lar to devel­op­ments with­in AI, IoT is an exam­ple of tech­nol­o­gy and acad­e­mia inter­sect­ing at a broad­er lev­el. An increase in the num­ber of cours­es and oth­er spe­cialised degrees in recent years is help­ing to pro­mote new prac­tices in con­nect­ed tech­nolo­gies which, in turn, trick­les down to phys­i­cal devel­op­ments.”

While IoT skills can help end-users and con­sumers, this can also enhance job roles that tra­di­tion­al­ly would­n’t be asso­ci­at­ed with the tech­nol­o­gy.

“There are swathes of job roles that can be enhanced by using con­nect­ed devices and many sec­tors are already mak­ing use of it,” says Pil­grim Beart, co-founder and chief exec­u­tive of Devi­cePi­lot. “The largest impact will be felt by engi­neer­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice and oper­a­tions teams.

“A great exam­ple is Win­now, a com­pa­ny that uses con­nect­ed tech to reduce food waste in indus­tri­al kitchens. It uses a cam­era, scales and some clever AI around bins to iden­ti­fy and weigh food waste; exam­ples might be car­rot peel­ings or fruit that has gone beyond its use-by date.

“This, in turn, gives kitchens a lot of data about exact­ly what they are throw­ing out and how much of it, enabling them to reduce waste and improve their bot­tom line. All of this is done with­out the need for any human inter­ven­tion.”

IoT solutions will play a big role in 2021

Work­ing from home under tiered lock­downs is con­tin­u­ing at least for the time being, so busi­ness­es will need to be ready with their solu­tions and close the IoT skills gap in 2021.

Robin­son at Econ­sul­tan­cy believes upskilling will be essen­tial in help­ing com­pa­nies suc­ceed. “To pre­pare for demand, every busi­ness must encour­age and enable their peo­ple to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the thing they do 38 hours a week,” he says. “Their minds must open to how they will use the IoT to close the 130-hour gap between how they work and how the cus­tomer con­sumes, acts and buys.

“Every employ­ee and entre­pre­neur can learn, they just need to be giv­en the per­mis­sion and the tools to make it hap­pen.”

Beart con­curs, believ­ing IoT will show its poten­tial through­out 2021. “As com­pa­nies look to increase effi­cien­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a work­force that I expect to be work­ing remote­ly for much of next year, con­nect­ed devices will show their worth as they can mon­i­tor and con­trol a huge num­ber of process­es remote­ly,” he says.

“My advice to IoT ser­vice providers is to get organ­ised and ready for growth. This means hav­ing the infra­struc­ture in place to prop­er­ly mon­i­tor and man­age their devices as cus­tomers will quick­ly lose patience if providers are unable to deliv­er the lev­el of ser­vice and effi­cien­cies they promised.”

To help close the IoT skills gap, LinkedIn has made near­ly 1,000 hours of free cours­es avail­able for in-demand skillsets asso­ci­at­ed with IoT.

The jobs under threat from IoT

The inter­net of things (IoT) has vast poten­tial across all sec­tors in terms of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and rev­enue, but it could make some jobs redun­dant. In devel­op­ing coun­tries, espe­cial­ly, organ­i­sa­tions might find them­selves attract­ed to auto­mat­ed process­es, which are more effi­cient and cost effec­tive, than hir­ing local­ly.

One job IoT could auto­mate is pest con­trol. Researchers in Italy stud­ied how wire­less sen­sors could help with iden­ti­fy­ing codling moths attack­ing apple crops. They found IoT sens­ing devices could run machine-learn­ing algo­rithms, which could col­lect data over a wider area and run imme­di­ate data analy­sis and anom­aly detec­tion.

Auto­mat­i­cal­ly send­ing a noti­fi­ca­tion to the farmer removes the need for local work­ers to check each insect man­u­al­ly. How­ev­er, this would impact the local econ­o­my neg­a­tive­ly, as there would be no sea­son­al work. Accord­ing to the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, these types of jobs, which require “low edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment,” are at risk.

In man­u­fac­tur­ing, jobs such as pro­duc­tion super­vi­sors are also at risk. Eric­s­son has worked with Worces­ter Bosch to cre­ate the UK’s first 5G fac­to­ry, using tech­nolo­gies such as 5G and IoT to opti­mise machine per­for­mance and increase out­put by as much as 2 per cent.

Part of the Worces­ter­shire 5G Test­bed, the fac­to­ry now runs real-time machine sen­sors that enable them to address prob­lems on the pro­duc­tion line before they hap­pen. How­ev­er, this removes the need for super­vi­sors or machine oper­a­tives, poten­tial­ly cost­ing them their jobs. The hope is IoT will cre­ate more mean­ing­ful work for which redun­dant work­ers could be retrained.