Offshoring hitting homegrown skills

Offshoring is having a negative impact on the skill level of the UK workforce, according to the exclusive 2008 silicon.com Skills Survey.

Almost half (48 per cent) of respondents agree or strongly agree offshoring is undermining the skillsets of UK techies.

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Skills Survey 2008

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Just over a fifth (21 per cent) hold the opposite view.

The results back up other findings revealed by the 2008 survey which show the proportion of IT salaries in the lower middle wage bracket (£25,001 to £40k) is shrinking - suggesting there are fewer second job opportunities where IT workers could traditionally build their skills.

According to the survey, more than a third (36 per cent) of organisations have probably offshored IT jobs - although half (49 per cent) apparently have not.

Despite major concern among tech workers over the impact offshoring is having on home-grown UK tech skills, the survey also suggests there is growing acceptance that sending some jobs overseas does not mean the death of the UK tech industry as a whole.

A smaller proportion of respondents to the 2008 survey believe sending jobs abroad threatens their own job than those answering in previous years. Just under a third (28 per cent) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed offshoring is a threat, compared to a third who believed this in 2007, and more than a third back in 2004 and 2005.

Meanwhile the proportion of respondents who disagree or strongly disagree with the notion of offshoring threatening their job security has risen five percentage points on last year - to almost half (46 per cent).

However the proportion of respondents who are not sure whether offshoring threatens their job has been rising steadily over the last four years - from just under a fifth (19 per cent) in 2004, to 26 per cent in 2008 - suggesting the issue of what impact offshoring has is becoming increasingly muddy.

As in previous years, a significant majority (66 per cent) of respondents believe IT jobs which involve business skills are less likely to be offshored than jobs that only involve technical skills. And a large majority (60 per cent) of techies continue to support the view that hiring contractors is essential to plug UK skills gaps.

Meanwhile, the notion of hiring workers from overseas to fulfil short term needs has increased in popularity since previous surveys - but more than a third (39 per cent) still do not support it.

Earlier this year, The Work Foundation warned the UK must do more to attract foreign skilled workers to help plug the skills gap.

Rank and file IT workers are still more likely to feel their job is threatened by offshoring than CIOs and IT managers but IT contractors are the most insecure about jobs going overseas, with more than half (55 per cent) of those responding to the survey agreeing or strongly agreeing offshoring is a threat to their livelihood.

More than a third of software/web developers feel threatened by offshoring, and around a third of IT pros also worried. This compares to only around a fifth of CIOs and more than a fifth of IT managers.

IT consultants also fall into the 'more worried' camp, with around a third feeling threatened by work going abroad.