MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: With Indian IT firms focusing on surfing the digital wave , a growing number of employees are gripped by fears of being washed-up by rapidly evolving technologies.Although 80% of the industry’s business continues to come from older or legacy technologies, experts say this share is set to shrink and workers need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant. But a section of the workforce may not be up to the job. “There will be a small bunch of people who will either not have the adaptability or learnability to make that change,” said Prithvi Shergill, head of human resources at HCL Technologies.These people will have to look for options within their companies or outside, where the proportion of legacy skills work is higher, said Shergill. An anonymous confession on an unofficial Facebook page of an IT company recently lay bare the frustration of working on old technologies, ending with the hashtag — get me out of legacy systems.An employee with a multinational company told ET on condition of anonymity: “They are not training anyone on my technology. And they won’t release me from my project because they don’t have anyone to replace me. I’m stuck.” Wipro had said in April that automation, artificial technology and greater efficiency through digital technology could reduce the company’s headcount by 30% or nearly 50,000 in three years.The company said that the reduction was likely to happen through attrition and redeployment to higher value technologies. But as clients of IT firms look to move to newer technologies and cut costs on the older systems through automation, employees realise it is time to reskill themselves. IT companies are spending crores of rupees on training their employees, but they are naturally picking those with the talent and aptitude for coding. “Companies usually invest in upgrading people who are technically very sound. Those who have been mediocre at coding and development, have to change roles into areas like pre-sales, business management or project management, which are a mix of functional and technical skills,” said Alka Dhingra, assistant general manager at Teamlease.She said those with skills in Java, Cobol, Mainframe, C and Fortran are still heavily used but up to 30% of the employees working with other legacy technologies will have to upgrade or shift roles within the next three years to survive the change. Many IT employees are acutely aware of this and are paying for their own training at thirdparty institutes.An employee of Tech Mahindra said: “Those who want to upgrade to newer technology are investing in it themselves, and moving on to better opportunities, within or outside their current workplace. However, growth in Indian IT companies is often not defined as coding proficiency in a given technology, but whether you are able to move on from coding to a more management or analysis-based role.” Some replacement roles are already in jeopardy, though. “Let’s face it, sometimes it is easier to train someone fresh than multiskill people,” said the chief executive of an IT company, requesting not to be identified.“If you measure your job as per whether you run an offshore centre or just manage projects and go away from the technology then you are likely to be the first in the line to be asked to leave,” the CEO said. IT companies are nonetheless making valiant attempts to reskill a large number of employees, given the growing importance of digital technology. TCS’ digital business currently contributes a little over 13% to its overall revenue. “It’s normal human nature to want to work on the newest technology,” said Ajoyendra Mukherjee, executive vice president and global head of human resources at TCS.The challenge lies in striking a balance between new and legacy skills, said Mukherjee. “We try and rotate them from project to project where they can learn more technologies and skills. But legacy technologies are still a large part of the business and so that has to be managed,” he said. IT firms are also looking at ways to prevent dissent in the initial training programmes. “We will be training freshers and existing employees, but the existing employees will be chosen on merit. That makes it less likely that people will say, ‘why him and not me?’ and also give them an incentive to perform better,” said Saurabh Govil, HR head at Wipro.But to be truly successful in digital, IT companies are realising that they cannot leave employees working on core projects unmotivated. “We cannot afford to have anyone stuck in the old. No one has to be straitjacketed and told you have to stay in the old stuff,” Infosys chairman R Seshasayee told ET. While the routine tasks leave little scope for innovation, companies can find new ways to create value addition for clients. One way to do this, Seshasayee said, is to improve quality and reduce cost. “That innovation is what we need to stoke,” he said.