Tech Most Favoured Sector Amid ‘Great Resignation’

New research from BT has provided some interesting insight into the changing corporate workplace amid the ‘great resignation‘, and the need for new skills.

BT’s research revealed that 69 percent of UK employees would consider a career change if given the opportunity. And the tech sector is where most people would turn to.

It comes after Tessian research last month revealed that resignations during the Coronavirus pandemic are causing security risks for US and UK businesses, due to data exfiltration when people take company data when they leave their jobs.

Worker reskilling

But the BT research could provide some hope for IT managers struggling to deal with an ongoing skills gap in the tech sector.

The pandemic has seen some UK employees feeling trapped on their career path. Indeed, BT research reveals over two thirds (69 percent) of UK adults would reskill into a new field if given the opportunity.

Almost half (42 percent) feel unable to leave their current career path; and feeling ‘too old’ (31 percent), the uncertainty of a new industry (28 percent) and loss of salary (24 percent) seem to be the top barriers to reskilling.

The BT research found that technology was the most popular sector that people wished they could switch to (18 percent).

This is followed by health (17 percent) and finance (10 percent).

However, BT’s research also revealed that more needs to be done in relation to awareness and perceptions of the cyber industry.

This is because it seems that the cyber industry unknown to many people as potential career path. Before being told more about the sector, only 4 percent of UK adults would consider cyber as an alternative industry, this reduces to as little as 1 percent for people who identify as female.

Cyber misconceptions

Unfortunately, it seems that cyber industry still seen as male-dominated.

When asked to describe a cybersecurity professional, over half (54 percent) said male, compared to 18 percent who said female.

There seems to be perceptions that cyber is only aspirational to those with technical skills. The perception of the job is that it’s too technical (32 percent), with little understanding of how valuable other soft skills could be applicable (45 percent).

So in order to tackle these perceptions and the cyber skills gap, BT and CAPSLOCK last week announced a first-of-a-kind cyber reskilling programme that will retrain current BT employees and equip them with the skills needed to pursue a new career in security.

The research was carried out by Walnut Unlimited, which surveyed 2,010 adults across the UK between 18th-21st March 2022.