THE WORKFORCE CHALLENGE

The persistent demand for data centre capacity continues to create a need for larger facilities, bringing with it an unyielding need to fill the ever-increasing number of job openings being created at these growing businesses.

Growth is an excellent problem to have. However, the industry needs to take notice of what lies in front of it regarding the potential labour shortage. Professor Rabih Bashroush, of Digital Infrastructure and the Director of the Enterprise Research Lab at the University of East London, has produced data that shows precisely what is happening in the data centre labour market.

To establish a holistic view of the data centre workforce and trends, Professor Bashroush’s research team has filtered the data of millions of LinkedIn users in the data centres world to discover their characteristics.

THE THRESHOLD

The data shows a shortage in as little as 5 to 10 years – The typical distribution curve of the global workforce shows that the bulk of employees are in the training stages of their careers. The highest number of employees have two years of experience, and after this two-years the number of employees in the global workforce gently drops.

However, Professor Bashroush’s 2020 data set shows us that the reverse is true for the data centre industry.

The experience levels of the data centre workforce plots a typical aging workforce curve and tells us of the problems ahead. There are not enough new employees in the pipeline to make up for the significant proportion of workers who will be leaving the industry to retire within the next decade.

SENIORITY DISTRIBUTION

As an executive search company working with the digital infrastructure leadership teams and investors, we are relied upon to provide real-time market information and identify emerging trends. Our role in the hiring of senior people means that we are seeing this growth firsthand. We know, for example, that we have to look outside of the data centre industry to identify potential candidates with transferable skills.

Professor Bashroush’s  analysis of LinkedIn data shows that we have a pipeline that is regrettably short of candidates to fill vacant roles.

Some interesting trends that are evident include the increasing reliance on unpaid workers in the data centre labour market. The trend continues in 2023 where there was a 57% increase for our industry compared to a 21% increase in the rest of the market. We are seeing only a 15% growth in terms of entry-level paid positions compared to the entire global market that is seeing a 33% increase.

The scales for our industry are tipped in the wrong direction.

A balanced, future-proofed workforce would have its largest groupings at entry- level as well as senior positions–with the number of people starting their careers being higher than those at a senior level. The opposite is true for those working in data centres.

We are also growing significantly faster than the rest of the market in C-level positions; we had a 28% increase compared to 1% in the rest of the market. The number of people at the VP level increased by 25% compared to 4%, and the Director level increased by 37% compared to a 10% increase for the rest of the market.

Industry growth is being driven by very large organizations, the hyperscale’s for example, are employing people at a fairly high level (e.g., Director or VP-level). The data also indicates growth from start- ups, which is reflected in the increasing percentage of CEOs. The number of data centre people who are business owners also increased by 27% (compared to 6% in the general market).

The LinkedIn data also shows that the two company sizes within the data centre industry that have the fastest increase in employees between 2020 and 2023 are organizations with 10,000 employees, with a 24% increase in three years compared to 18% in the rest of the market, and start- ups with 1-10 employees, which have seen  a 31% increase compared to 21% in the rest of the market.

The data also validates the anecdotal trend that we are attracting people from other sectors in significant numbers because it shows the number of people in the industry at senior levels or who have more than 15 years experience appears to be increasing despite low volumes of people with less experience. A big focus of recruitment effort has historically been recruiting ex-military personnel, who bring with them ‘mission critical’ experience. But if we are to veer away from the potential labour shortage, the industry needs to widen the net for other types of career-changers, even those in the early stages of their careers with fewer years of experience.

The industry needs to find more people with transferrable skills, and it needs to fix the poor visibility of the sector for jobseekers starting out by helping jobseekers find the path to the digital infrastructure industry.

NO POOL, NO PIPELINE

Attracting and retaining talent is a widespread problem. In a 2022 survey carried out by the Uptime Institute, over half (53%) of operators surveyed said that finding qualified candidates for open jobs was difficult. And this is up from 47% who reported this difficulty in 2021 and 38% in 2018. The exponential growth of many businesses is also disrupting employee retention, with 42% reporting that staff are being hired away by other data centre competitors, compared to a 2018 figure of 17%.

The challenge is no doubt compounded by the demographic imbalances in the industry, meaning that many potential candidates with the right skills or aptitudes are easily deterred because they do not see enough ‘likeness.’ While there is still not enough data to reveal the true demographic makeup of our industry, Uptime has been looking at gender since 2018, and progress is slow at best. In 2022, only 4% of operators said that about half of their data centre staff were women, the vast majority (more than three-quarters) reported that their data centre workforce was 10% women or less, and one in five data centre teams did not employ any women at all! On this matter, of diversity and inclusion, leaders across the industry need to urgently devise and execute action plans and put their total commitment behind them.

IT’S A QUESTION OF SUSTAINABILITY

This new data from Professor Bashroush and his team is a clear indication that if the industry does not act on its imperative to build a future talent pool, it doesn’t have a sustainable future.

A central pillar in the industry’s future success is attracting people with the potential to grow the industry, people with different skills and occupational expertise, and people who want to carve out an entire career in the industry.

It is also worth thinking about how the industry can attract more people from under-represented groups to build a workforce with more diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as people with cognitive diversity who can offer different problem-solving abilities and new perspectives. For sustainable workforce growth, we need people who can shine a light on the data centre industry, act as role models, and leave footprints for more people to find successful careers within our critical industry.

By Mike Meyer, Managing Director, Portman Partners

CONTACT

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