Martin Savén

"We will act as a beacon"

Skills supply
Martin Savén has been an industrial policy expert at IT&Telecomföretagen since October last year. One of his responsibilities is the IT Skills Council, whose work aims to ensure good access to digital excellence. Ahead of the first Council meeting of the year, we asked Martin Savén what he sees as his and the Council's most important task. 

- The difficulty of recruiting the right skills is one of the industry's biggest obstacles to growth among the member companies of IT&Telecom. This is where I see my task, and that of the IT Skills Council, to identify and draw attention to the lack of the right skills and to ensure that relevant decision-makers and stakeholders receive good data and information about the situation. We will act as a blowtorch to bring about the changes that are needed in many areas to improve the situation," says Martin Savén.

What are the main challenges?

- That the skills shortage does not have a single cause or reason, but that there are and have been many different interacting factors that have meant that the supply of skills to the IT and telecom industry does not work properly.

What do you think of the efforts being made to reduce skills shortages?

- Much is being done today, but more is needed. Companies need to be better at communicating the good job opportunities that exist in the industry, both in terms of remuneration and work tasks. Society needs to succeed in guiding more people to study the courses that lead to where the jobs are - including in the IT and telecom industry. It is not one or a few things that need to be done, but a whole of many small and medium-sized measures and changes that are needed.