Today’s hiring environment is more competitive than ever. Australia’s IT leaders must attract and retain the best talent to maintain operational excellence and develop new ideas.
In addition to the workplace transformation resulting from the pandemic, organisations are facing many economic uncertainties right now, which makes retention even more important.
At TOPdesk, we firmly believe that employee wellbeing directly influences customer wellbeing. To achieve peak performance for your company, prioritising your talents is essential. In this article, we will look at the importance of retaining the best people in a competitive hiring landscape and cover five tips to help you hold onto the best.
- Encourage professional development
All good people value professional development, and your IT team should encourage it from the outset. Offer training and certification programs for staff, with a focus on the “skills for tomorrow” to keep the top talent excited.
Professional development does not need to be overly expensive and there are many options for remote delivery and package deals for IT teams.
IT leaders should keep in mind professional development also helps improve the company’s skills and capabilities, and it gives staff a feeling of satisfaction and career advancement without moving to a new role.
How compelling is professional development for holding onto talent? In 2021, research by ClearCompany found if a company invests in employees’ careers, 94% said they would stay at the company longer.
- Recognise and reward achievements
People appreciate being rewarded for their work and good people should be rewarded for their high achievements.
If you notice staff are going the extra mile and doing “hero” support or development work, then they should be recognised for it.
It is easy to establish programs for rewarding good outcomes and longevity, and if people are rewarded for loyalty, then they will be loyal in return.
IT leaders should align recognition and rewards with staff expectations because the last thing you want is for staff to think rewards are petty or “token” and only handed out as a matter of course. You also need to keep an eye on rewards programs fostering an overly competitive sentiment between staff.
In 2021, insurance company Youi won the HR award for best reward and recognition program with its “YourGame” gamification platform. The judges concluded it was an innovative program and a “gold standard for in-house recognition”.
- Promote work-life balance
Work-life balance has come to the fore in recent years thanks to the pandemic, but it is definitely seen as important to people’s job satisfaction, and ultimately loyalty.
In one example, research by job seeker service Monster.com found that 57 per cent of actively looking job seekers say they would prefer to work fully remote.
Whether your organisation supports remote working or not, nowadays most people don’t want to return to the old way of working, and IT leaders should not let a lack of work-life balance result in resignation letters.
By allowing work-life balance, in the form of hybrid working and greater flexibility, you can give IT talent the best of both worlds.
Another valuable tip is to maximise the use of software and tools available to your IT staff. Leveraging automation through these resources is an effective and effortless way to ensure your team can confidently log off at 5pm. Not sure where to start? In this blog, we explain 5 IT tasks we believe you should start automating.
- Keep an eye on supplier quality
This is not often talked about in the media, but one thing that really upsets IT staff is the frustration of dealing with poor quality suppliers of products or services.
If vendors and suppliers are bad staff must deal with any shortfalls and this frustration can easily tie in with unwanted stress and burnout.
It is now incumbent upon IT leaders to partner with vendors that value culture and will create a collaborative environment with the IT team. Look out for negative support reviews as it is important to find suppliers that will be there with you when things go wrong.
Our experience as an IT Service Management software company has taught us that customers highly value local in-house support over offshore alternatives.
When in trouble, customers dread being kept on hold for 45 minutes before speaking to an unfamiliar agent about an urgent issue. Instead, they want a responsive team that they know well to reassure them their issue will be resolved as quickly as possible.
The true measure of a vendor's reliability lies in how they handle such situations when things don't go as planned.
Listen to the team if they have serious concerns about vendors and empower them to decide on what helps them best.
- Watch out for bad managers
A bad manager or toxic culture can easily result in good people fleeing from an organisation.
There is an old saying “people don’t leave their job, they leave their boss” and a bad manager, or someone who is not capable of managing people, is one the worst things for retaining IT talent.
Generally good people want to be loyal, but if they are under a bad manager then loyalty dissolves quickly.
The problem can also be very entrenched and hard to fix. According to Harvard Business Review, abusive bosses care more about their social image than actually changing how they act.
How do you fix bad bosses? This is where your leadership and the leadership of the board and executive team come into play. Senior leaders need to keep their ears to the ground and clamp down on bad bosses who shoo away top talent.
No one is inherently a good leader, but, like any skill, leadership is trainable. Here are some essential soft skills that IT leaders should possess.
Support and IT personnel are often highly intelligent individuals whose abilities are not fully harnessed. By leveraging tools that automate routine work and enabling employees to focus on complex challenges where they excel and can demonstrate their knowledge, companies can create a more fulfilling work environment and hold onto the best.
To learn more about TOPdesk, visit our website at www.topdesk.com/en
