MOTIVATION, BARRIERS, AND OUTCOMES OF TECHNOLOGY UPSKILLING: A STUDY OF CHENNAI BASED IT EMPLOYEES

Abstract

The information technology industry in India, which is based in the country's major metropolitan cities, such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune, is experiencing a major technological change as AI, cloud computing, data analytics and automation become more widespread. In this transformation, upskilling of the existing IT workforce – continuous learning of new or enhanced technical skills to align with changing industry needs – has become one of the most critical HR priorities of the decade. Although the concept of technology upskilling is important, the motivations behind the motivation of IT professionals to engage in technology upskilling, the barriers faced to do so, and the career and organisational outcomes of successful technology upskilling engagement remain under-documented in the empirical literature. This study aims to fill this gap by conducting a structured questionnaire survey on 220 IT professionals from various experience levels (0-13 years or more) in technology companies in Chennai, between February and May 2026. The study used descriptive quantitative cross sectional design and data analysis technique used is frequency profiling, mean score ranking and cross tabulation. The key findings include: The biggest drivers for technology upskilling are fear of skill obsolescence due to AI and automation (M=4.21) and desire for salary increment or promotion (M=4.18) while the biggest barriers are time constraints (68% of 0-3 years’ experience employees) and organisational inertia (74% of 13+ years’ experience employees). The positive outcomes reported by respondents, such as better job performance (79.1% of upskilled employees reported this), salary increment (52.3%), increased confidence (71.4%) and better prospects for role transition (48.6%), provide strong evidence that technology upskilling has a significant and multi-faceted return to both employees and organisations. The conceptual framework is visualized in three figures as separate high-resolution PNG files, which include the score distribution of the motivation and the prevalence of barriers by experience group. HR practitioners, organisational L&D managers and policymakers in the IT sector in Chennai are discussed.