26TH
ANNUAL
Motivate Workers With
Salary, Skills and Strategy
IT professionals
want to be
connected to
initiatives that
the organization
cares about
most.
EVERYONE CARES about compensation, and almost everyone feels they deserve to earn more than they make. So what happens if your company can’t afford to entice new talent with significant raises or high-dollar salaries?
Rachel Russell
oversees research at
TEKsystems, an
IT staffing, human
capital management
and IT services
consultancy. Visit
www.teksystems.com
or follow @TEKsystems
on Twitter.
TEKsystems speaks with more than 100,000 I T
professionals every week, and we conduct quarterly
research as well. According to our findings, IT
professionals rank career development as their top
priority — even higher than compensation.
They want to get involved with the latest trends
and the greatest projects — which is incongruous
when you consider that more than 80% of IT’s
time is devoted to keeping the lights on (KTLO).
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to
narrow the gap between what IT shops have to do
and what employees want to do. And those steps
can boost your IT organization’s appeal to prospective employees while elevating its performance
and business value.
Set a long-term vision with the business. IT
professionals want to be connected to initiatives
that the business cares about most. But if they’re
always bogged down in the mire of KTLO operations, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to take on strategic initiatives with much success. To break that
cycle, IT leaders must build relationships with the
business that position them to know the strategic
vision as far out as possible. From there, you can
start a conversation around important trade-offs
between KTLO and strategic IT initiatives.
Conduct strategic workforce planning. Since
the economic downturn, many IT professionals
feel like they’ve been asked to do it all. They’re
fatigued, and many resent the drain on their pro-
fessional and personal lives. A thoughtfully crafted
workforce plan can alleviate bandwidth issues and
allow your IT departments to perform work at a
lower cost without sacrificing quality.
