Miss Swain believes the key focal points to avert further skills shortages is for the IT industry lie in addressing the under-representation of women in IT and the need to facilitate more flexible working practices.

She continued: "Women account for less than a quarter of the workforce within the IT sector and the proportion is declining. A better work-life balance is needed. IT companies are squandering talent by failing to encourage women whose family commitments restrict them from working traditional hours.

"The IT industry lends itself naturally to the concept of flexible working and should be in the vanguard. This would encourage more women into the sector. But it is dragging its feet."

A recent survey by the Department of Trade and Industry revealed that despite a rise in remote working over the last four years, only one third of those who could potentially work from home, do. The results of the survey showed two thirds of these workers are men, most of whom are self-employed.

Miss Swain said: "The IT sector must embrace this trend for remote working and introduce measures to extend flexible working. Within our experience of the IT sector, most of those who remote work are senior management, unless they are self employed. There are significant management and cultural issues to resolve in order to enable flexible working for all levels of staff."

ATSCo highlighted the following issues which it says should first be addressed by IT companies in order to facilitate more flexible working:

• Long hours culture

  The 'long hours culture' and heavy work loads make the idea of flexibility seem impossible. Managers and employees must be fully informed on what flexibilities a company will allow and how flexible working will not impede career progression.

• Inadequate management

  The IT industry has not developed reliable methods of producing project managers capable of combining technical, business and interpersonal skills. Good technical skills do not always equate to good business or interpersonal skills.

• Poor management training

  The quality of management training needs to be addressed within the IT industry in order to attract and retain highly skilled staff. Poor and inadequate management leads to reluctance to allow remote management. Companies must recognise the importance of management training in attracting and retaining talent.

• Inadequate staff training

  IT professionals need training in word processing, presentation creation, etc. IT companies should encourage employee involvement in European Commission schemes such as the Initiative for New Employment, the eLearning Initiative and the European Computer Driving Licence.

• Lack of funding

  IT departments require greater funding to facilitate flexible working, to provide laptops, pay overtime, provide engineers to travel to repair software problems that cannot be resolved over the phone. Inadequate budgets constrain IT departments to seem inflexible.

• Restrictive legislation

  Recent legislation including the Working Time Directive and IR35 make flexible working for IT contractors and IT employers less appealing. Restrictive regulation is not always the answer especially if a broader change of culture is to be achieved.

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Richard Powell, © Shout99.com 2002