“The Gartner CIO Talent Planning for 2025 Survey reveals how leaders are adapting to persisting IT talent challenges while the demand for emerging skills grows more urgent. CIOs can use these insights to inform their talent strategy as they fortify themselves to meet the AI boom head-on.
Key findings
- Eighty-six percent of CIOs and senior IT leaders plan to increase IT staff levels in 2025 — a 7% average projected growth rate compared to 5% the year before.
- Skills gaps in AI, generative AI (GenAI) and cybersecurity persist, which rank as the top three skills preventing organizations from achieving their objectives.
- Nine out of 10 organizations have adopted or plan to adopt skills-based talent management to address talent and skills challenges. However, HR capacity and capability and the organization’s ability to collect and maintain the currency of employees’ skills data pose significant barriers.
- Hiring talent to close the skills gap is not working, requiring CIOs to investigate other talent approaches. The leading strategies for expanding the IT talent pipeline include upskilling and/or reskilling current employees and using AI to automate tasks or augment people resources.
Recommendations
- Respond proactively to evolving business demands by prioritizing a skills-based talent approach over traditional role-based hiring to quickly deploy adaptable teams and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
- Develop an upskilling and reskilling program that expands the IT talent pipeline by prioritizing filling skills gaps in AI, generative AI and cybersecurity skills, since these skills ranked highest in preventing organizations from achieving business objectives.
- Unlock AI’s full business potential by adopting outcome-driven learning practices to accelerate AI literacy across the enterprise.”
Gartner, CIOs Adopt Skills-Based Talent Strategies as IT Skills Gaps Linger, Jose Ramirez and Lily Mok, 28 April 2025.
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The Gartner CIO Talent Planning for 2025 Survey reveals how leaders are adapting to persisting IT talent challenges while the demand for emerging skills grows more urgent. CIOs can use these insights to inform their talent strategy as they fortify themselves to meet the AI boom head-on.
Key findings
- Eighty-six percent of CIOs and senior IT leaders plan to increase IT staff levels in 2025 — a 7% average projected growth rate compared to 5% the year before.
- Skills gaps in AI, generative AI (GenAI) and cybersecurity persist, which rank as the top three skills preventing organizations from achieving their objectives.
- Nine out of 10 organizations have adopted or plan to adopt skills-based talent management to address talent and skills challenges. However, HR capacity and capability and the organization’s ability to collect and maintain the currency of employees’ skills data pose significant barriers.
- Hiring talent to close the skills gap is not working, requiring CIOs to investigate other talent approaches. The leading strategies for expanding the IT talent pipeline include upskilling and/or reskilling current employees and using AI to automate tasks or augment people resources.
Recommendations
-
Respond proactively to evolving business demands by prioritizing a skills-based talent approach over traditional role-based hiring to quickly deploy adaptable teams and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
-
Develop an upskilling and reskilling program that expands the IT talent pipeline by prioritizing filling skills gaps in AI, generative AI and cybersecurity skills, since these skills ranked highest in preventing organizations from achieving business objectives.
-
Unlock AI’s full business potential by adopting outcome-driven learning practices to accelerate AI literacy across the enterprise.
Strategic planning assumptions
By 2027, 90% of CIOs will implement a skills-based approach in some talent management processes, up from 46% today. By 2026, AI will augment 50% of office workers in global enterprises, boosting productivity and raising the average quality of work.
Data insights
The demand for IT talent proficient in emerging technology skills persists in 2025. However, the urgency to fill those needs has grown as the pace and scale of AI implementation expand across industries, businesses and job functions, forcing organizations and their workforce to adapt whether they’re ready or not.
The Gartner CIO Talent Planning for 2025 Survey offers insights CIOs can leverage as they adjust their strategy to fill much-needed talent and skills gaps. Conducted from October 2024 to December 2024, this survey consists of responses from 487 CIOs and senior IT leaders from midsize and large enterprises across North America, EMEA and the Asia/Pacific regions. Its purpose was to:
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Benchmark the skills that CIOs plan to prioritize
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Capture the methods they plan to use to hire and develop talent and skills critical to their strategies
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Assess key emerging technology roles they’re implementing in their enterprise