NashTech Australia shares Digital Leadership insights at Sydney event 2023

Hybrid/Remote/Office Working 

The DLR finds that, in general, the heat of the skill shortage as experienced during the pandemic has reduced while specific skillsets still remain scarce. The most popular route to fill gaps in talent is through direct hiring – speak to Laura for assistance – and the second most popular route is outsourcing – speak to Rick how NashTech can assistance in your case.  

Recruitment may be down compared to the past years, but organisations now need to focus on retaining the talent they have. The panellists highlighted that their strategy is to hire for cultural fit and alignment with the company’s purpose and complement that with skill training as well as providing employee networks, councils, well-being initiatives, and flexible working models to help their employees not just to do a job but to thrive in their job. They have noticed employees value authentic care and flexible working arrangements that work for each individual. Interestingly, all panellists’ companies offer unlimited vacation to their employees, within rail guards.  

There was a strong sense that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to either mandating five days in the office, allowing 100% remote working, or supporting a hybrid model in-between the extremes. It will depend on the role, the company culture, and the individual’s preferences and life circumstances that will make a model more successful long-term than another approach. However, there was an agreement that a forced five-day return to the office for everyone is counterproductive, disadvantages especially women, and can make people change companies. The DLR found that 9% of the companies participating in the survey required full-time return to the office.  

Data and cloud 

Data is everything to tech companies, but three quarters of the companies participating in the DLR find themselves to not effectively leveraging insights into their data. Companies (not only tech companies) need to know what data they have where and what they do with it, not just to comply with legislation but as a foundation for the ability in compiling meaningful, accurate and complete data analytics.  

Companies need to think about what business questions they need to have answered and why to ensure the right data is surfaced. If that is in place and an understanding of the existing data landscape, the supporting technology to analyse and report is an easy bit to add in-between. Companies see this as a challenge while acknowledging data analytics as one of the top two deliverers of RoI.  

There is a misconception about data security responsibility laying only with the cloud provider. Once that mindset shifts, a company can more powerfully leverage the cloud and its available services to incorporate in their products and how they are being built. It also facilitates the preparation for upcoming opportunities like Quantum Computing which is especially important for Australia as its ranked the fifth most important country for this technology. The cloud is considered the technology providing the highest RoI for tech companies. 

AI and cybersecurity 

The panel stated that regulation could be useful. However, current legislation can’t keep up with the speed of advancements in AI and to implement effective regulations, authorities must work with tech companies, not in isolation or ‘against’ them. We need ethical AI products and avoid products hitting the market too early only to get big money quickly. It was suggested for companies to understand what community they are serving as well as why and how they can respect and ensure that community’s safety and privacy, to reframe the terminology from ‘just’ security. 

While AI has the potential to be used for cyber threats, it’s also used to counter those attacks. It’s an arms race, both sides constantly pushing each other for further advancements. It is not a question whether AI will replace anyone’s job, it’s rather a need to use AI to do one’s job. In addition, it can help to reduce job stress by e.g. taking away a lot of the overwhelm a security analyst may experience with constant systems alerts of which many could be handled by AI tools instead as their accuracy has improved from only 30% some years ago to over 90% nowadays.  

It was highlighted that AI, just like the industrial revolution, is an opportunity for humanity to advance our thinking, develop processes that are more efficient and effective, and do things that were never thought of before or considered impossible so far. Currently, AI still shows inherit limitations and doesn’t reflect the full spectrum of ethnicity, beliefs, knowledge or human thinking. There is a responsibility to those AI tech companies to become inclusive. There was also a clear notion amongst the panel that AI will not become sentient in the very near future and it will still take a while for AI to accurately distinguish fried chicken from Labradoodles after all.