Digital workforce competencies: A multidimensional scale for the 21st century

The need for a well-equipped, multi-tasking digital workforce emerged into the limelight post-introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies. Originally developed to boost the performance of German manufacturing industries, it quickly spread worldwide, driving major changes across all industries, including Information Technology (IT). Despite the requirements of multi-competent IT professionals, the digital workforce competencies construct has not been thoroughly researched, nor has a scale establishing the basic threshold of required competencies been developed. Using the data from face-to-face expert interviews and validating the scale on three different sample sizes, we aim to establish a competency scale required for recruiting Information Technology/Information Technologies Enabled Services (IT/ITES) engineers. Applying the extended Blooms Taxonomy theory, we established a four-dimensional scale of the construct and validated a scale of 26 items. The scale can be helpful in the IT/ITES industry, for employers in employing freshers in the industry, and for students who seek employability in the IT/ITES industry. It is also helpful for the policymakers and educators of higher education institutes engaged in technical undergraduate courses for Computer Science and Information Technology (CS/IT), thus contributing to preparing a multi-tasking workforce that is not only industry-ready but also helps mitigate the unemployability gap in the industry.