A skills “gap” implies an area where individuals within an existing workforce have lower skill levels than are necessary to meet business or industry objectives, or where new entrants lack the skills required for them to perform effectively. A skills “shortage” is where there is a lack of adequately skilled individuals in the labour market.
In the printing industry, we have both a gap and a shortage. Perhaps the most significant gap is in the use of digital and informational technology.
Finding a solution to skill shortages requires a strategic, coordinated response from these groups: government, industry, the enterprise itself, and educational/training organisations. Industry needs to provide a strategic, long-term action plan, enterprises must promote solutions within the workplace, and education/training providers must broaden their approaches to traditional training.
Employers in the printing industry are actively addressing skill shortages by strategies that include introducing new technology to reduce the need for highly qualified staff, and putting pressure on training providers to update the content and delivery of their training.
Currently, there is a tendency for the industry to invest money in technology rather than to examine the more complex issue which is at the heart of the skill shortage problem: that industry lacks both a far-reaching vision and a long-term strategy for dealing with the future workforce requirements of the printing industry.
A core issue is a mismatch between the training currently being given and the skills actually required to compete successfully in the new printing industry environment:
• improvements in the productivity of printing businesses brought about by equipment technology advances;
• changes in demand for traditional print products;
• the cannibalisation of traditional print products by other media;
• technological sophistication of new equipment that does not require traditional apprenticeships.
Successful printing companies are not of a particular size, but are those companies that do not think and act like traditional printers. They are businesses that view themselves as being in the communications industry, not in the ink-on-paper business.
Information technology analyses, creates, maintains and supports applications and databases used by an organisation, and deals with the use of computers and telecommunications in the design, development, installation and implementation of information programmes and systems. IT encompasses the use of hardware, software, telecommunications, database management, websites and other information processing technologies used in computer-based systems to create, store, retrieve, transfer, process and present information. IT projects involve the enhancement of systems or technology to meet particular business needs. Used as a synonym for the computer professionals in an organisation and also known as IS (Information Systems) or DP (Data Processing).
Information Technology and Computer Science are inter-related disciplines that involve the understanding and design of computers and computational processes. They are concerned with the understanding of information transfer and transformation while endowing them with some form of intelligence. The disciplines range from theoretical studies of algorithms to practical problems of implementation in terms of computational hardware and software.
In 1980, setting-up a four-colour printing job took well over one hour at the press. Today it takes about 15 minutes. Paper waste has been reduced by a factor of five, while productivity has increased. Much of these increases came from IT — workflow, automation, and computerised systems.
The number of software innovations for automating or improving print processes reveals a differentiation opportunity through information technology (IT) capabilities. This means that IT skills are becoming an essential new competency of print producers and sellers who want to distinguish themselves from competitors. Printers with up-to-date IT capabilities can combine task specific software from multiple vendors for e-commerce to facilitate sales, transactions and communications with customers. Printers also need IT skills to set up web catalogues and design template programmes for specific customers, automate internal processes and improve management control over pricing, costs and productivity.
More importantly, internal IT resources can be used to customise software for e-commerce or general purpose printing functions to gain competitive advantages.
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