Tech workers are fed up and want to quit. A few thoughtful changes might make them stay

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There’s no shortage of opportunities for IT staff, so bosses need to make the work worthwhile.

Image: SrdjanPav/Getty

According to a global analysis of 18,000 employees, up to two-thirds of IT workers are open to or already actively seeking new job opportunities, putting CIOs in a precarious position in the face of a tech talent shortage.

A workforce survey conducted by analyst Gartner in the fourth quarter of 2021, which included 1,755 IT employees from 40 countries, found that only 29% of IT workers have a “strong intention” to stay with their current employer.

IT professionals are more likely to quit their jobs than employees in other functions, Gartner found, with an intention to stay 10.2% lower than non-IT professionals — the lowest of any business function. .

Less than a third of IT professionals have a strong intention to stay with their current employer, but the number is even lower in Australia and New Zealand (23.6%), Asia/Pacific (19.6%) and in Latin America (26.9%). Even in Europe, the top performing region, only four in 10 IT professionals have a strong intention to stay in their current job.

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The findings point to looming tech talent retention headaches for CIOs and IT managers, who are already struggling to attract key technical personnel in a lean talent market while battling numerous HR and IT fires. staff as overworked teams struggle with burnout.

In order to retain key technical staff, CIOs might need to advocate for greater flexibility in work design than the rest of the organization, said Gartner analyst Graham Waller.

Waller told LoginMode that the demand for technical skills, the growing acceptance of remote work and a greater desire for work-life balance have shifted the balance of power from the employer to the employee, IT staff in particular finding themselves “in the driver’s seat”.

“There’s an increase in hiring at a lot of companies, which obviously creates a lot of opportunity,” Waller said.

“We looked at IT employees who changed jobs in the last year and 76% of them had at least two other offers. This contrasts with 43% of non-IT professionals. so has a huge opportunity and a lot of power shifts to the employee, in terms of hot skills.”

According to Gartner, younger IT professionals are more likely than their older colleagues to consider changing jobs.

The analyst’s survey indicated that IT workers under 30 are two and a half times less likely to stay put than those over 50. Only 19.9% ​​of IT workers aged 18-29 have a high probability of staying, compared to 48.1% of those aged 50-70.

Waller suggested that many of these young workers were driven by purpose and a desire to work for a company that reflected their values, such as diversity, equality and inclusion. “That translates to a driver of respect,” Waller added.

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Although staff resignations are inevitable, implementing more flexible work policies can have a demonstrable impact in reducing attrition rates, increasing performance and attracting new talent.

In a 2021 Gartner survey of 3,000 employees across a wide range of industries, 65% of IT employees said flexible work arrangements influenced their decision to stay with their employer.

CIOs should use a data-driven approach to identify workers most valuable to the organization and most at risk of quitting, and tailor hybrid work policies to keep them engaged and performing, the analyst said.

This includes combating burnout, which carries the combined threat of hurting IT worker productivity and engagement, increasing churn rates, and making the organization more vulnerable to security threats.

“The traditional way a lot of managers and organizations thought about performance was to focus on employee productivity,” Waller said.

“Interestingly, when we went completely remote for the most part, that metric actually improved. People were working longer hours, bending over more, and so productivity improved for a lot of people.”

However, this model is not sustainable, said Gartner; instead, employers should embrace a “more human-centric work model” that emphasizes employee well-being and empowerment about how, when and where they work.

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Some of the most progressive companies are pioneering new schedules, like the four-day week, Gartner noted. “The human-centric model enables and gives flexibility to leaders and teams to decide how often [to use the office] based on the underlying work, but also on people’s individual circumstances,” Waller said.

Meeting culture and the concept of the office as the epicenter of work also need to be challenged in order to improve the employee experience – although Waller noted that overturning outmoded ideas could prove tricky, in especially in more traditional businesses. “They worry, ‘if we can’t manage through visibility walking around and seeing our people, how can we make sure they’re actually working?'” he said.

While inflexible employers are faced with having their employees “vote with their feet and walk away,” poor implementation of a hybrid work policy also carries risks. The poorly done hybrid tends to be a unique company philosophy, Waller said, while organizations that “intentionally redesign work” with a focus on the individual employee are likely to “hire, retain and perform” other organizations.

Management training plays a big role here. “The agile philosophy talks a lot about managing by results, not micromanaging individual things. It gives teams a lot of power,” Waller said.

He said one of the most important things in this climate is to really listen and be empathetic to your employees: “For organizations that have done this well, they’ve really changed the focus on the role of the manager to be much more focused on employee well-being and sustainable performance, and where they have, employees are 1.7 times more likely to stay and 17% more productive.”



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