The UK seems to have a skills problem, especially in the online sector. Chinwag Jobs, a recruitment website for digital media in the UK, has found 97% of the 200 employers it surveyed are finding it difficult or impossible to attract suitably qualified digital staff for their businesses. And over three quarters are reporting problems persuading staff to stick around longer than it takes to dial-up a cup of cold tea from the office vending machine.
While a lot of businesses staffed up on ‘digital’ skills last year, it would appear we have mined most of our natural resources and it’s getting harder to get the staff - to the point where 85% of companies are worried about businessÂ’ growth. Of course, the question is, are these people leaving older ‘digital agencies’ for tech startups, or is this skills shortage hurting startups too? Alas, likely the latter.
How fortuitous then that Anglo Estonian (see video below recently organised a reception for UK businesses out to reap the same rewards Skype did by building their team in Estonia. Here they found staff equally as skilled as their UK counterparts and, coincidentally, cheaper. Trebles all round!
Going East is a way to go if one needs inexpensive skilled labour.
On the one hand, it’s true: you can find relatively cheap and skilled people in other countries (that’s what our company does for a living). On the other, it’s easier said than done as the communication problems may turn out to be too big. In case of Skype and other medium-sized and big companies it makes sense to set up a dev centre elsewhere but if you need just one or two skilled guys and you don’t have too much money, that may be a big problem.
True there are pros and cons to outsourcing.
Its not a panacea for all ills and communication is a big issue of course.
Many companies now outsource to Estonia precisely because they no longer want massive linguistic and cultural and time-zone differences (Estonians are more “scandinavian” than anything else btw) that they had previously encountered in places like India, Russia or China.
In the case of Estonia the time difference is relatively low (2 hours), nearly “everyone” speaks a high level of English, the literacy rate is the highest in the world, easyjest flies there (cheap and 2.5 hours) plus its an EU country which helps admin enormously.
Estonia also has a bit of reputation for e-stuff too which helps them keep in touch with advanced / mature markets like the uk.
More on Why Estonia? http://www.angloestonian.com/n1/why-estonia.1.html
I do find it slightly curious that while some companies are happy to outsource abroad and then encounter issues re different timezones and non native speakers of English that we still have so few telecommuting jobs in the UK where there are no timezone issues, language isn’t a problem and certainly for permanent work you don’t have to pay to relocate people if they can happily work from a remote location. Might also help to address the skills gap too.
Why are they happy for remote working to be done from another country and not other parts of the UK?
Many companies have a mix of in-house and outsource (domestic or foreign) but I guess one factor for the oversees decision is cost (20-50% lower in Estonia depending on nature and volume of work) and hunger “to serve”.
Certainly I would expect people to check domestic resources first before looking further afield though so you make a very valid point I think, Craig
Thanks for the mention Mike!
As part of our commitment to tackling the issue of the digital skills shortage and exploring the full range of (possibly co-operative) solutions, we’re holding a panel discussion event about it tomorrow night. http://live.chinwag.com/skillsemergency
It’s sold out already but we still welcome any opinions or questions posed here or elsewhere and want to include them in the event. We’ll also bear them in mind in our ongoing activities around the issue.
The comments here are really appreciated. Perhaps TechCrunch UK could do a survey or something else in the future to gauge the extent of how the talent shortage specifically impacts start-ups..? I think it would be of interest to the UK/Ireland (and wider European) start-up community.
I think it is difficult to attract the right staff, I know from the constant calls Elliott (our PHP guru) gets each day from head hunters. Even I get the odd call (they must be desperate).
With the new countries now in the EU and freedom of movement it should ease the skills shortage as we can ‘import’ staff. But, I’m not sure that solves the soft skills problem - marketing, seo etc.
We will probably be expanding our staff this year and I’ve looked at opening a branch in the East, luckily I speak a bit of the lingo having spent some time in Russia, but their tax regimes are not exactly friendly and it seems many in those countries are looking west.
Gary’s right.
Our company altex (Estonian -part of EU) is one of the few offering soft skills as you call them e.g. seo tasks, image-html conversion for emails, link building, usability/credibility/accessibility/visibility testing etc etc.
I know of one other called e3 in Russia also run by English guy called Nick (weirdly also from Brighton).
Many ex-soviet/now EU countries have large communities of Russian speakers but I would say almost none have focussed soft skills support.
Good places for programmers and designers.
Having said that they are a lot of creative designers around (in north and eastern Europe) and if the brief is not uk-centric then I think they may be suitable too.
Outsourcing to Russia adds not just bureaucratic impediments but also timezones too.
If you are prepared to look “that far” then check out the Ukraine instead IMHO.