Untapped Digital Talent

Why the UK’s £3bn Opportunity Is Being Missed

There’s been no shortage of headlines about AI, automation, and job losses.

But what’s often missing from the conversation is the quieter contradiction sitting underneath it all:
we’re automating roles, paying out millions in severance, and still claiming there’s a digital skills shortage.

I’m proud to have contributed as a member of the Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce, led by the City of London, to the newly launched report:

“Untapped Digital Talent: the £3bn opportunity.”

The report sets out, with clarity and evidence, why the UK’s digital talent challenge is not simply about skills — it’s about access, pathways, and outdated assumptions about what digital capability looks like.

The Cost of Getting This Wrong

The data in the report is difficult to ignore.

In 2024 alone:

  • Unfilled digital vacancies cost UK businesses £949 million in Gross Value Added

  • The same gaps led to £296 million in lost profits

  • Nearly 30,000 digital vacancies across financial, professional services and technology sectors were hard to fill

  • Automation-related redundancies could result in £757 million in severance payments

If nothing changes, the report estimates the UK economy could lose £10.8 billion in productivity and £3.3 billion in profits over the next decade.

This isn’t a marginal issue. It’s a structural one.

This Is Not a Skills Shortage

One of the most important conclusions from the report is also one of the most misunderstood.

This is not a simple lack of digital capability in the workforce.

It’s a pathways problem.

Too many recruitment processes still rely on narrow criteria:

  • Linear career histories

  • Traditional qualifications

  • Perfectly labelled job titles

Meanwhile, digital skills are being developed everywhere — through adjacent roles, lived experience, self-directed learning, career breaks, reskilling, and non-traditional routes that don’t fit neatly into legacy hiring frameworks.

When those pathways are ignored, talent goes unseen. And the cost of that invisibility is now measurable in billions.

Automation Without Redesign Is Expensive

There’s another uncomfortable truth the report brings into focus.

Automation, when implemented without workforce redesign, doesn’t eliminate cost — it moves it.

Organisations reduce headcount in one area, then struggle to hire for digital roles elsewhere. The result:

  • High severance payouts

  • Prolonged vacancies

  • Increased pressure on remaining teams

  • Slower innovation and delivery

Calling this a “skills gap” misses the point. The issue isn’t capability. It’s how we recognise, value, and mobilise it.

Why This Matters Now

The findings in Untapped Digital Talent have already attracted national and international attention, including coverage by The Guardian, Politico, and Business News.

That attention is welcome — but attention alone doesn’t change systems.

What does change systems is:

  • Widening recruitment pathways

  • Recognising transferable skills

  • Designing roles around outcomes, not pedigree

  • Treating digital inclusion as economic infrastructure, not a side project

These aren’t abstract ideals. They’re practical levers with real financial impact.

A Personal Reflection

Being part of this Taskforce has reinforced something I see repeatedly in my work across AI, digital transformation, and workforce design:

Talent is not scarce. Access is.

If we’re serious about building future-ready organisations — and a resilient economy — then we have to stop treating workforce transformation as a risk to manage and start treating it as a system to redesign.

Read the Report

📘 You can read the full report here:
https://www.theglobalcity.uk/insights/untapped-digital-talent

If you’re involved in leadership, hiring, education, policy, or technology, this report is worth your time — not as theory, but as a practical blueprint for what needs to change next.


Digital Skills, Future WorkforceKatrina YoungPartnerships