How AR can train workers during a labor shortage

Because of the increasing demand for cloud storage and how intimately its functioning impacts people’s daily lives, data center construction is booming in areas across the globe and acquisitions are rising. For instance, Blackstone recently announced plans to buy QTS Realty Trust for roughly US$7 billion.

But a global shortage of the skilled employees who run data center facilities is causing headaches for companies concerned that the competitive environment — which has companies paying high salaries to poach facilities management staff — could interrupt their operations.

Half of data center operators surveyed by the Uptime Institute in 2020 said they were currently experiencing difficulties finding candidates for open positions, up from 38% in 2018. Data centers will need to hire 300,000 more staff by 2025, according to the Uptime Institute report, which said, “the lack of specialist staff will be an increasing concern for all types of data centers, from mega-growth hyperscale to small, private enterprise facilities.”

Training new employees comes with the risk that they will make the kind of mistakes in the data center setting that could take the cloud down. The salve? Augmented reality trainings. In this video podcast, we tried them out.

To learn more about JLL’s data center facilities management, click here.