In China, information technology is driving major changes at the individual, corporate, and macroeconomic levels. To examine the impact of these changes, Gallup and Amazon Web Technologies conducted a survey on digital skills.
Studies have shown that digital skills are bringing enormous economic value to Chinese companies and workers, boosting gross domestic product (GDP), boosting corporate revenue growth and innovation, and boosting workers' income and job satisfaction.
Levels are divided into three categories based on the types of digital skills that incumbents use in their jobs:
● Basic digital skills (eg, email, word processing, social media content publishing)
● Intermediate digital skills (eg, drag-and-drop web design troubleshooting applications, data analysis)
● Advanced digital skills (eg, cloud architecture and maintenance software and application development, artificial intelligence and machine learning)
1. Improving digital skills will lead to huge advanced digital skills
Increase gross domestic product (GDP): Incumbents with advanced digital skills have higher productivity and income, which can contribute 5.4 trillion yuan to China's GDP every year, and 25.7 trillion yuan to global GDP.
2. Mastering digital skills can help workers increase income and job satisfaction
Career benefits: 96 percent of Chinese workers who completed digital skills training in the past year reported at least one positive career benefit.
Higher wages: On average, Chinese workers with advanced digital skills earn 30 percent more annually than their counterparts without digital skills.
Job Satisfaction: 91% of workers with advanced digital skills report high job satisfaction, compared to 61% of workers with basic digital skills and 67% of workers with intermediate digital skills.
Eager to learn: 94% of Chinese workers expressed interest in receiving additional training in digital skills.
3. Invest in digital skills to help companies increase annual revenue and promote business innovation
Increased annual revenue: 65% of companies in China that employ employees with advanced digital skills report a steady increase in annual revenue over the past year, compared with 44%.
Promoting innovation: In the past two years, 77% of Chinese companies with a high degree of digitalization have launched new and innovative products, compared with 63% of companies with only basic digitalization.
Cloud-enabled business: The innovation rate of Chinese companies that operate most of their business on the cloud is 35 percentage points higher than that of Chinese companies that operate part of their business on the cloud or do not use cloud computing services (94% vs. 59%). The rate of steady growth was 24 percentage points higher (71% versus 47%).
4. Chinese enterprises are facing a severe challenge of digital talent shortage
Talent shortage: Chinese companies are highly dependent on digitally skilled talent: 85% of companies say that digitally skilled talent is very or extremely important to their business development in the next five years, and 77% of companies say they are looking for digitally skilled people to fill job vacancies. However, 86 percent of businesses say it is difficult to recruit people with the digital skills they need, and another 58 percent say this is because they lose out to competitors in the race for qualified candidates.
Industry certifications can help ease hiring challenges: 32 percent of surveyed companies prefer candidates with a bachelor's degree, even for entry-level IT employees. At the same time, 77% of companies believe that industry digital skills certificates and course training can replace a bachelor's degree.