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Retain Your IT Staff Through Job Rotations

August 21, 2010/0 Comments/in IT Department, IT Hiring, IT Job Satisfaction, IT Professionals, IT Staff, IT Staff Retention, IT Staffing, IT talent, Software Engineers, Technical Staffing, Technology/by admin

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, an IT Job Rotation Program can help you retain your top performers.

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, your IT staff members will inevitably question whether they should explore new opportunities. The management challenge that we face is that IT professionals possess skills that are relatively transferrable from one industry to another, so if you’re in a hard hit industry, you have more risk in retaining your top talent as other industries improve faster. So, how do you retain your IT staff in today’s unpredictable economy?

Build a Job Rotation Program

Job rotation programs are designed to move employees from job to job within a company as a vehicle to attract, retain and motivate staff. Rotation programs give employees an opportunity to explore other careers, prevent job boredom, develop competencies, foster career growth, and improve talent in an organization. A well designed job rotation program can have a very favorable impact on job satisfaction, productivity and retention. Rotations are different from normal job openings because the job opening is created by two employees interested in moving into each other’s jobs.

Where Do You Start?

First, assemble a small, cross-functional team of individual contributors and managers to define the program. The team can help you study the topic, define specific objectives, establish the process, and make sure that whatever you eventually put in place will be an effective program. There is a lot of free information available on the internet and even consultants that specialize in the topic.

Defining Objectives

While the name of the program clearly implies its intention, it does not convey the reasons why such a program is necessary for your company. It is important that you clearly emphasize why the program is needed. Organizations put rotation programs in place to solve different objectives. The team that you assemble to build the program can help you identify and communicate the objectives of the program. Merely saying that the program will be designed to help retain employees is not sufficient because no one will understand how such a program will help retain employees. And retaining employees is a goal or an outcome, not an objective. An example of an objective of a job rotation program may be to broaden an individual’s knowledge of other functions in the IT department, which in turn will help become more valuable to the organization. In this age of doing more with less, this is a worthy objective.

Establishing a Process

After you have sufficiently studied rotation programs and are ready to design your own, carefully consider the type of process that you will need. Some companies have very informal rotation programs. In these companies, the culture itself encourages employees to move from one job to another. There may be enough natural movement that a highly structured program is not necessary – too much structure may even be viewed as an impediment in this type culture. Although, it is arguable that some amount of structure is necessary in any type of culture so that employees understand how to make a move into a different role that is right for them – and for the company.

When designing a job rotation program, consider steps such as the request process, eligibility, matching participants to opportunities, terms of rotation, timing, transition plan, and monitoring the rotation. It is best to have the program clearly documented and made available on the company’s intranet.

Measuring the Success of the Program

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IT Staffing and IT Staff Augmentation – Project-Based Staffing

August 17, 2010/0 Comments/in information technology hiring, Information Technology Recruiting, Information Technology Staffing, IT Hiring, IT Job Growth, IT Job News, IT Projects, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers/by admin

It’s next to impossible for IT employees to be experts in every skill needed to complete any project that comes up. To make up for this lack of expertise, many organizations hire outside temporary help. About 10% to 20% of workers on IT projects are contingent employees, according to David Van De Voort, a principal consultant with Mercer, a human resources and consulting firm in Chicago.

The task of staffing is typically an HR function, but the CIO oversees allocation of resources in the IT department, where it is often prudent to recruit specialized workers for specific projects. Establishing an efficient process for hiring and managing temporary workers is essential to the success of those projects.

One of the challenges in hiring temp workers involves finding the best contract workers and getting them up and running quickly and efficiently. Temporary workers aren’t cheap. According to Van De Voort, organizations fork over $3 for every $1 they pay a regular employee. Find the wrong people — or supervise them inadequately — and an organization is likely to waste a great deal of money in the process.

The upshot: It’s essential for CIOs to have an effective freelance-management system. According to staffing experts, a few key steps in the hiring and managing processes can ensure smooth sailing.Hiring

The first stage involves finding and hiring the right people. The more systematic the process, the easier it will be to locate the right freelancers quickly.

Designate regular sources Organizations often find freelancers from a few sources. Contingent staffing firms offer temps who specialize in IT skills. Some focus on specific areas of expertise, such as ERP applications or Java development. Because those firms are able to devote considerable effort to finding specific candidates with specific skills, they’re especially useful when the project needs only a few freelancers at a time.
Create a database of expertise An ongoing database of freelancers can list specific areas of expertise. “When you actually need the freelancer, you’re ahead of the game,” says Dora Vell, managing partner of Vell & Associates, an executive search firm in Waltham, Mass.
Clarify the job description While this step may seem obvious, doing it right can make a difference. Articulate specifically which skills are needed and the day-to-day duties will be performed, as well as the size and scope of the project, specific benchmarks, timelines, and other expectations for performance. Failure to do so often leads to hiring the wrong person. “We have to make sure we have every detail nailed down so we provide the right candidate,” says Kevin Knau, executive vice president of Hudson, a Chicago staffing firm.

Managing

Once the right freelancers are on board, they have to be supervised. While management of contract workers requires some of the same steps used when overseeing any employee, there are additional issues to consider, as well.

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IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

August 17, 2010/0 Comments/in IT, IT Department, IT Employees, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Job Growth, IT Job News, IT Job Satisfaction, IT Professionals, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers/by admin

It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options.

Computerworld — The Jet Blue flight attendant’s dramatic de-planing last week says a lot about workplace frustration, a problem that may be increasing in IT.

A few days before flight attendant Steven Slater released a rear chute and exited his career with a couple of cans of beer in hand, an organization of IBM users meeting at the Share conference in Boston held an informal discussion entitled “The Mythical 40-Hour Week.”

It wasn’t a gripe session as much as a chance to share notes about what’s going in IT workplaces since the Great Recession. What emerged was an insider’s view of the frustrations building among tech workers as work days lengthen, pay remains stagnant and career growth appears thwarted.

Those taking part in the discussion asked that their names not be used so they could speak frankly.

“You don’t know how many hours you work – it’s all about getting the job done,” said one IT worker. “There are lots, lots of people in IT who are expected to work far more than a 40-hour week,” said another. Sixty hour weeks are common.

Yet another worker described bosses who expect their employees to work late into the night if need be to fix problems and then be on the job the next day at the usual time. Even vacation time is no longer sacrosanct: one person said he expects to be contacted “more than a half dozen times” during his time off.

Even if companies are getting more unpaid hours from their workers in today’s climate, the companies themselves may be getting hurt in other ways, according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in Washington, D.C. The CEB conducts ongoing behavioral surveys of employee attitudes, and many of its clients are Fortune 500 firms.

The willingness of employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — or put in the extra effort to get a job done — remains at low levels, the CEB found in its most recent survey, completed in the second quarter.

This willingness to put in extra effort fell from about 12% of workers in 2007 to about 4% last year. It was the lowest level in 10 years. The latest CEB survey of nearly 20,000 IT workers said that percentage had changed little and is now at 4.6%.

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IT Staffing: IT Hiring Continues to Improve, According to Surveys

August 10, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, information technology budgets, Information Technology Field, information technology hiring, Information Technology Organizations, Information Technology Projects, Information Technology Recruiting, information technology spending, Information Technology Staffing, IT, IT Budgets, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Industry, IT Job Growth, IT Job News, IT Jobs, IT Projects, IT Spending, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers, Technical Staffing, Technology, Technology Budgets, Technology Projects/by admin

Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

IDG News Service — Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

“Overall, employer confidence is improving,” said Tom Silver, senior vice president, North America, at Dice Holdings, which operates Dice.com, a technology and engineering careers website. “We hear that as we speak to our customers every day.”

The most recent edition of The Dice Report, which heard from 600 respondents across the U.S. who hire or recruit technology professionals, found that 71 percent expect to add more employees in the second half of the year than they did in the first. More than half of that 71 percent expect to hire 10 or more new IT staff members. Likewise, CDW’s IT Monitor has had similar findings in its surveys across the U.S. and in some areas of Canada.

The IT Monitor recently found that 37 percent of IT decision makers at large companies expect to hire more IT staff in the rest of the year, which is up 11 percentage points from a year ago — the size of the increase was “a much faster jump than I would have expected to see,” said Matt Troka, CDW vice president of product and partner management and acting CMO.

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IT Spending: Let your budget be free

July 30, 2010/0 Comments/in IT, IT Budgets, IT Department, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Spending, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers/by admin

If you were looking for some ammo to get your budget increased for the coming fiscal year, Forrester has got your back with arguments why CEOs should stop limiting their IT budget allocations.

The gist of the argument is that putting CIOs under budget pressure forces them to spend on maintaining current operations rather than helping to grow the business. This isn’t a particularly universal argument; there are a lot of shops where IT really doesn’t have any clear or positive ROI avenues to contribute to business growth. The idea that new initiatives can contribute to efficiency and stability, though, can be easily substituted.

But the real problem with the Forrester argument is that they are probably advancing ideas that CEOs are already familiar with, and have rejected. More than once I have come across CEOs that squeeze IT budgets explicitly to prevent growth… growth in IT, at least. That is, after all, what they most frequently get for their invested IT dollars… new systems, more ongoing maintenance costs. There is no faster way to exist the CEO’s office than to come to him presenting as a positive something he has already mentally adjusted to as a negative.

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After Pay Cuts, IT Workers May Seek Payback in New Job

July 23, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, information technology budgets, Information Technology Field, Information Technology Organizations, Information Technology Projects, information technology spending, IT, IT Budgets, IT Candidates, IT Department, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Industry, IT Jobs, IT Professionals, IT Projects, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers/by admin

A Harris Interactive survey found that IT workers see an improving economy — and an opportunity to start looking for a better job.

Cross posted from Computerworld

Computerworld — It may be matter of debate whether the IT job market is improving.

Certainly, for Eli Lilly and Co.’s (LLY) IT workers who are facing a layoff, the state of the job market is clear. The pharmaceutical company last week said it plans to cut 340 IT jobs on top of 140 positions cut earlier this year.

Eli Lilly employs some 1,250 IT workers in the U.S. and said the IT cuts are part of an overall restructuring of more than 5,000 workers nationwide, a company spokesman said, confirming a report in the Indianapolis Star , hometown newspaper in the city where Eli Lilly is based.

Despite the woes in the Eli Lilly IT operation, national IT hiring indexes have been showing fluttering month-to-month increases , and a new survey conducted by Harris (HRS) Interactive found that confidence among tech workers in the economy is on the rise.

Harris surveyed 4,367 employed tech workers, including 241 in IT operations, in the second quarter of 2010 and found that 38% of the IT workers believe the economy is getting stronger, compared to 32% in the first quarter.

The survey, dubbed the IT Employee Confidence Index, was conducted by Harris on behalf of Technisource Inc., a national staffing and recruiting firm.

The breakout data from the survey could portent trouble for IT managers and companies now relying on fewer IT employees.

For example, the survey results provides evidence that many IT workers may already be preparing to look for new jobs over the next year.

Harris said that 61% of IT workers earning between $35,000 and $50,000 a year are "likely" to start looking for a new job over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 27% of IT workers now making between $50,000 and $75,000 annually and 36% of those whose salaries exceed $75,000 are "likely" to begin a job search.

"In some areas, salaries were cut or certainly salary increases were suspended," said Sean Ebner, a regional vice president at Technisource. And, he added, "as cuts were made in IT, the remaining staff was asked to do significantly more without additional compensation. It really did create some pent-up animosity."

Ebner said the survey found more interest in seeking new jobs than ever before.

The willingness to look for new jobs doesn’t yet mean the job will be there. For instance, only 27% of IT workers earning between $35,000 and $50,000 indicated that they expect more jobs will be available to them.

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2010 IT spending still looks strong, Forrester says

July 22, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, information technology budgets, Information Technology Field, Information Technology Organizations, information technology spending, IT, IT Budgets, IT Industry, IT Job Growth, IT Services, IT Spending, IT Staffing, IT talent, Technical Staffing, Technology, Technology Budgets, Technology Projects/by admin

IDG News Service – Despite fears caused by the European debt crisis, spending on technology products and services is set to continue growing around the world, although the pace of growth in Europe overall will be lower, Forrester Research said in a report released Tuesday.

U.S. IT goods and services spending will jump 9.9% in 2010 to $564 billion, compared to 7.8% growth worldwide to $1.58 trillion, Forrester said.

Canada will experience the highest IT spending growth this year with a 16.2% rise, according to Forrester. IT spending in Latin America is set to grow 15.4%, followed by Asia-Pacific with 11%. Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa will see a 10.5% uptick.

But IT spending in Western and Central Europe is set to drop by 0.7% due to the debt crisis and the weak euro.

The US 2010 forecast represents a 1.5% increase over one Forrester gave in April, while the global growth rate remained roughly the same as the previous forecast of 7.7%.

Growth is being spurred partly by the fact that the U.S., and to a lesser extent, other nations, are entering an innovation cycle marked by adoption of new technologies, Forrester said.

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Regards,

Mike Hanes ProVisionTech

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Integrity in Recruiting
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Dilemma: IT Staffing Solution- Staff Augmentation (part II)

July 12, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, Information Technology Organizations, IT Consulting, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing/by admin

Here’s a continuation of my previous post about staff augmentation. Another consulting client had a very short term project that required a specific skill set that no one on her staff possessed. The intricacy of the project required that our engineer become part of the IT team and interact regularly with marketing and senior management. Handling that as a fixed priced project would not have worked for us or them. We were able to provide an experienced engineer to become a temporary part of the staff and complete the development in just a few weeks. That engineer had at his disposal our entire team of engineers and project managers to offer advice and guidance as the project progressed. This is another significant advantage to the client. The staff augmenting engineer of a solid integrator has an impressive team on their staff and can access that team at any time. Compare that to a new hire coming into the company. He or she may have contacts from previous jobs, or a network of peers in the industry but it is not the same as having fellow employees who have a strong vested interest in the success of the engagement.

Just as the engineer has an opportunity to bond more closely with the client, a big plus for the integrator, the client gains significant visibility with the integrator. I am a huge fan of tight, loyal, long term relationships between integrators and their clients. It is much better for both businesses in the long term. The very process of staff augmentation goes a long way in strengthening the relationship.

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Dilemma: IT Staffing Solution- Staff Augmentation (part I)

July 10, 2010/0 Comments/in IT Consulting, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent/by admin

“We interviewed for six months for this position, and then gave this guy six months to prove himself, but he just hasn’t worked out.” a frustrated client explained to me just last week. “Now the head of that team has given her notice, and will be gone in two weeks! It’s just extremely frustrating” she went on to say.

Unfortunately this type of problem is a regular occurrence for small to medium sized businesses trying to build and/or keep their IT staffs intact, happy, and motivated. This recession, which many IT managers had hoped would provide a much needed reprieve from the incredible challenge of finding the right IT talent, has brought little relief. It is just as difficult to recruit and keep exceptional IT talent as it has ever been. There is a solution however, that I have seen work well for many companies willing to think outside the box a bit. I refer to it as “staff augmentation, basically bringing in outside personnel to augment your current staff from time to time”.

You see, there are many solid IT integration companies that have talented IT engineers with a wealth of knowledge of a variety of networking solutions. These are very expensive people to keep on staff. For integrators, keeping these engineers busy on billable projects is crucial to their profitability. Utilizing this talent in staff augmentation roles on a regular basis has many advantages. The first and most obvious is that such an engagement is usually billed by the hour, making the engineer’s billable hours 100% percentage billable100%. The second is that it can provide a degree of stability for the engineer who can report to the same site, with the same hours, for a specific period of time. That can be a welcome break for an engineer who has been all over the map juggling a variety of projects. It also allows the engineer to form much tighter working relationships with key staff at a valuable client. From the integration company’s perspective it can be a real win.

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