Since the dawn of the digital age, it’s been assumed that every subsequent generation would understand technology better than their parents. While that may be true in terms of TikTok, a number of recent studies suggest that it might not be true for everything.
It seems like Gen Z may have a substantial skills gap when it comes to vital software skills, something that could have serious ramifications for all manner of businesses. So what’s the truth about this lack of software literacy – and is it contingent on businesses to solve it?
Digital regression
In many ways, Gen Z – that’s people born between the late 90s and the early 2010s – is more technically adept than the older generations. Unlike the millennials before them, this generation has grown up in an entirely digital world. As far as many of them are concerned, wifi is the internet, the smartphone is king, and actual websites play second fiddle to social media apps. Being bound to a desk or a dial-up modem is a thing of the far-flung past.
There’s no doubt that in terms of the way we communicate and the lives we live online, the Gen Z experience is drastically different. While some millennials and earlier generations found friendships online through forums, games, or early social media platforms, talking to friends from around the world is now a part of everyday life. Discord servers, Whatsapp groups and social media platforms have broken down barriers between people from different regions and countries like never before.
For years, industry leaders predicted that these ‘digital natives’ would have a transformative impact on the workplace. Yet today, the reality looks very different. Yes, Gen Z knows its way around a smartphone, and can craft a perfect post for TikTok. But what few people predicted was the skills that might be lost in transition. As our means of access to the internet has shifted inexorably towards phones, traditional computing skills have fallen by the wayside.
In the workplace, however, these skills remain as important as ever – and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Phones and tablets are ideal tools for everyday tasks, but they aren’t particularly productive to work on. Whether it’s Windows, Mac or Linux, every office job still requires a level of computer literacy that some entrants to the workforce simply don’t have. Having not grown up using computers on a daily basis, Gen Z looks underprepared for a basic tenet of the modern workplace.
Identifying the issue
This isn’t just empty speculation from an embittered oldie. Members of Gen Z are actively reporting that they feel underprepared for working life, and subject to an undue level of expectation when they get there. Because of the perception that young people are inherently better with tech, many Gen Z recruits are finding themselves lumbered with tasks or roles that they are under-equipped to fulfil, or are at the very least inexperienced in.
This doesn’t just apply to using typical office hardware and software, either. Even when it comes to social media, the experience of Gen Z isn’t always immediately transferable. While they might know how to use different apps perfectly well, the tone and content of their own social media might not be the best fit for every business, even if it appeals to their peers. While some companies have harnessed Gen Z’s prevailing sense of humour – Wendy’s being a prime example – they remain the outliers.
Some won’t realise this until they enter the workplace. The general feeling seems to be that IT skills aren’t that relevant anymore in modern life, and in some senses, they’re right. The ownership of desktops and laptops has plummeted as phone ownership has risen, to the extent that more people now visit websites on their phones than computers. It’s just that when it comes to the workplace and to productivity software, computers are still needed.
It may partly also be an issue of skill transference. Many younger people will pivot from an iPhone to an iMac or Macbook when they need a computer for school or university. This might be because they’re trendy, but it’s also often because they share the same ecosystem, with apps like iCloud allowing you to switch seamlessly between the two. This can then cause issues when they encounter Windows PCs in the workplace, and find them difficult to use.
Teaching digital literacy
For all the social and societal changes that may have created this skills gap, however, there’s also responsibility on the part of governments and employers. IT education standards lag far behind where they should be, having been barely updated in many cases for decades. Where schools (and more broadly governments) had previously been slow to embrace coding and more advanced IT skills, IT is now struggling or simply failing to broach topics relevant to modern industries, such as AI, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.
A lack of integration across subjects also fails to teach basic productivity skills successfully, with IT often an afterthought outside of IT lessons. Meanwhile, too many IT curriculums still focus solely on teaching students how to use Excel and Word, in a way that is off-putting to many. While these skills are important in many jobs – and something many younger employees lack – failing to communicate this makes many students see them as boring and unnecessary. This is evident in the paltry figures for students taking IT at GCSE and A Level, particularly girls, and is a failure of governance and leadership nationwide.
There’s also an absence of clear, consistent pathways from school and university into the workplace. Where employers perhaps once relied on talent from the European Union, the UK now has to produce more talent internally. Yet the pipelines for this talent often do not exist, with either a lack of visibility for certain roles, or a lack of foundational skills. Without clear role models and representation in the business community, many young people never even consider the merits of IT and software skills for a future career.
How to solve the software skills gap
The immediate solution to this skills gap is to fill the void with further education. Teaching software skills to new and existing employees can help with integration, and ensure everyone is on the same page. While many of our Software Courses may be of benefit to Gen Z’s, they will also help to ensure standardisation in how employees use the software and structure documents, as well as teaching new features from the latest software versions.
In the medium to long term, joint action is needed from both businesses and governments, on a national and local level. More effort should be expended to forge partnerships between schools and businesses, presenting a range of career options to kids at an early age. By drawing explicit links between IT disciplines and specific careers or roles, schools can help to demonstrate the value of these subjects in real-life settings, at a point where that information is still useful to them.
IT curriculums should also be a focus for improvement. While some have moved away from simply teaching Office skills, Office (or Microsoft 365, as it now is) should be one element in a broad palette of useful IT skills. Creative areas such as software, game and web development should be employed to demonstrate the breadth of IT adjacent careers, along with other common office software, such as the Adobe Creative Suite, or popular productivity and CRM apps.
Schools should also consider empowering their IT departments to facilitate the cross pollination of IT skills. IT skills and software shouldn’t just be contained to IT lessons, but used in a way that makes sense for different subjects – using a blog for English, a small website for a history project, or Excel for maths. This could help to further demonstrate the utility of IT skills in a wide range of disciplines, rather than making it seem like IT exists in its own silo. Despite IT being fundamental to almost every job out there – and likely more so in future – it remains relegated to its own neglected subject.
The future isn’t completely bleak for software skills. Platforms such as YouTube have made resources more accessible than ever for those who seek them out, while a wealth of powerful free software is there to be harnessed. But with access to computers decreasing, more effort needs to be made to highlight the benefits of software skills, and the role they play in modern workplaces. Until then, businesses may need to pick up the slack – training all generations to put their software skills on an even keel.
