Urgent action is needed to tackle a major analytics and artificial intelligence skills crisis that’s already stifling productivity and innovation in the UK and Ireland.

New findings have been published by SAS as part of its How to Solve the Data Science Skills Shortage report following a survey of decision makers from major firms with an average of 27,000 employees.

Around 44% of the firms surveyed said they plan to invest in AI tech, but 63% said their staff did not have the AI skills necessary and 61% did not have enough staff to deliver the benefits of AI.

Compounding this problem, 53% of respondents were unsure what AI qualifications and skills were needed.

Nearly a quarter (21%) of firms said the pandemic had worsened the shortage of skilled staff versus just 8% stating staffing levels were better post pandemic.

Nearly nine in 10 business leaders (88%) say too few staff is preventing them from meeting customer demands, while also impacting morale among the workforce according to 75%.

Overworked and demotivated staff compounds the problem of skilled staff retention, the research said.

The numbers from the SAS survey back up UK Government figures that showed that there were 215,000 vacancies for ‘hard data skills’ that need to be filled. Yet this is unlikely to be met by graduates – for example, there are only 10,000 potential graduates in ‘data science’ each year.

Additionally, the UK tops the list among countries in Europe for investment in AI firms and projects. However, value from this significant investment will not be realised if there are not the skills available to deliver on it.

Glyn Townsend, Senior Director of Education Services at SAS for Europe, Middle East and Africa, commented: “Record employment, soaring inflation, the productivity conundrum and a permanent shift in consumer behaviour and expectations due to the pandemic, means demand for data science talent has never been higher.

“It will have wider repercussions for the economy, especially in the UK where there has been a tendency to outsource the need for analytics and AI skills to Asia Pacific and Latin America, compounding the problem in the global race for these skills.

“Therefore, we recommend that organisations take the following actions to solve the crisis.”

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He continued: “Consolidate diverse AI and analytics tools around modern, open, multi-language tools which will increase data science productivity 50% and empower end users to do basic analytics tasks, allowing data scientists to focus on core tasks.

“Grow the UK and Ireland data science talent pool by reskilling existing staff and creating more university data science graduates.

“Encourage a diverse range of certifications including training courses from software tools vendors. And create attractive data science employee networks, career structures and employment benefits.”

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