Data, digital, and technology skills are not just supporting the growth strategies of today’s leading businesses—they are the driving force behind them. Yet, it’s well-known that the UK has been battling with a severe skills gap in these sectors for many years, and as demand rises, retaining that talent is becoming a critical challenge for business leaders.
The data talent radar report
Our Data Talent Radar Report, which surveyed 125 senior data leaders, reveals that the current turnover rate in the UK’s data sector is nearing 20%—significantly higher than the broader tech industry average of 13%. Even more concerning, one in ten data professionals we polled said they are exploring entirely different career paths within the next 12 months, suggesting we’re at risk of a data talent leak in an already in-demand sector of the UK’s workforce.
For many organisations, the response has been to raise salaries. However, such approaches are often unsustainable and can have diminishing returns. Instead, data leaders must pursue deeper, more enduring strategies to keep their teams engaged and foster loyalty.
Finding the right talent
One of the defining characteristics of a successful data professional is curiosity. David Reed, Chief Knowledge Officer at Data IQ writes in the report, “After a while in any post, [data professionals] will become familiar—let’s say over-familiar—with the challenges in their organisation, so they will look for fresh pastures.” Curiosity and the need to solve new problems are at the heart of retaining top talent in the data field.
Experts say that internal change must always exceed the rate of external change. Leaders who understand this tend to focus not only on external rewards but also on fostering environments where such growth is inevitable, giving their teams the tools to stretch themselves and tackle new challenges. Without such opportunities, even the most talented professionals may stagnate, curiosity dulled by a lack of engaging problems.
The reality is that as a data professional, your future value—both to you and your organisation—rests on a continuously evolving skill set. Learning new technologies, languages and approaches is an investment that both can leverage over time. Stagnation is a risk not only for professional satisfaction but also for your organisation’s innovative capacity.
This isn’t a new issue. Our report found that senior data leaders are spending 42% of their time working on strategies to keep their teams motivated and satisfied. After all, it is hard to find a company that doesn’t, somewhere, have an over-engineered solution built by an eager team member keen to experiment with the latest tech.
More than just the money
While financial compensation is undoubtedly important, it is not the sole factor that keeps data professionals loyal. In our pulse survey, less than half of respondents said they would leave their current role for higher pay elsewhere. Instead, 28% cited a lack of career growth opportunities as their primary reason for moving, while one in four said a lack of recognition and rewards played a role. With recent research by Oxford Economics and Unum placing the average cost of turnover per employee at around £30,000, there is value in getting these strategies right.
What emerges from these findings is that motivation in the data field is highly correlated to growth, both personal and professional. Leaders need to offer development opportunities that allow their teams to stay engaged, productive, and satisfied. Without such development, employees risk feeling obsolete in a rapidly evolving landscape.
In addition to continuous development, creating an effective workplace culture is essential. Our study reinforced that burnout is highly prevalent in the data sector, exacerbated by the often unpredictable nature of technical debt combined with historic under-resourcing. Data teams work in high-stakes environments, and need can quickly exceed capacity without proper support.
After all, in software-based roles, most issues and firefighting tend to cluster around updates being pushed into production—there’s a clear point where things are most likely to break. Yet in data, problems can emerge suddenly and unexpectedly, often due to upstream changes outside formal processes. These types of occurrences rarely come with an ability to easily roll back such changes. As such, dashboards and other downstream outputs can be impacted, disrupting organisational decision-making and leaving data teams, especially engineers, scrambling to find a fix. It’s perhaps unsurprising that our report shows 73% of respondents having experienced burnout.
Beating the talent crisis long term
Building a resilient data function requires more than hiring the right people; it necessitates creating frameworks that can handle such unpredictable challenges. Without the right structures—such as data contracts and proper governance—even the most skilled data teams will find themselves struggling.
To succeed in the long term, organisations need to not only address current priorities but also invest in building pipelines of future talent. Programmes like apprenticeships offer an excellent way for early-career professionals and skilled team members to gain formal qualifications and receive high-quality support while contributing to their teams. Companies implementing programmes like these can build a steady flow of experienced professionals entering the organisation whilst earning valuable loyalty from those team members who have been supported from the very start of their careers.
By establishing meaningful structures and opportunities, organisations not only reduce turnover but drive long-term innovation and growth from within. Such talent challenges, while difficult, are by no means insurmountable.
As the demand for data expertise rises and organisations increasingly recognise the transformative impact of these skills, getting retention strategies right has never been more crucial. For those who get this right, the rewards will be significant.
- Data & AI
- People & Culture
