The emergence of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns has placed unprecedented pressure on the industry in terms of customer experience, service delivery and infrastructure resilience.
The pivotal role of telecoms in keeping UK PLC up and running has allowed many to quickly reposition themselves as part of the critical national infrastructure. It’s not a title of which to be envious: any failure is not just bad PR, it could literally be a matter of life and death – it’s a responsibility only the most robust organisations can withstand.
Yet Covid-19 has also resulted in the acceleration of digital transformation for many organisations: the adoption of cloud and collaboration technologies as organisations seek to support remote working is a prime example. Indeed the ONS statistics for April 2020 showed that 49.2% of adults were successfully working from home, due to social distancing measures. This is from a base of around only 5% at the beginning of the year. Having absorbed the shock, and dealt with the reaction, many telcos are already looking to reimagine their future, to understand what the next normal will be, and how they can reset their businesses and operating models to be fit for purpose in a more digitally advanced economy. More than this, they are looking to proactively lead the disruption that is affecting the sector.
A key part of this is the transformation of the workforce. Innovation begins and ends with people and culture. Already, many of the traditional roles within a telco are in decline, and challenges around the capability of the existing workforce are in question.
So what jobs will we see in the future telco, what will be the impact of automation, and what sort of skills will workforces need to deliver on future customer expectations? In this report we examine the challenge of skills shortages within the telco industry; consider how jobs are changing and the need to reskill the workforce accordingly; the role of new technologies such as AI in creating a hybrid workforce; and the impact this is likely to have on the telecoms workforce.