Pulled from - CIO — In a competitive market for highly skilled IT workers, what can organizations do to retain top talent? Is throwing more money at them the solution? What if they are already well compensated?
When 2,600 Linux IT pros were recently asked by the Linux Foundation and technology recruiter Dice what they considered the top three incentives for staying in their current jobs, their answers were: more money (74 percent), better work/life balance (61 percent) and a flexible work schedule or telecommuting (47 percent). Also highly cited, opportunities for professional development, especially if they resulted in advancement. [You can see the full survey results in the 2013 Linux Jobs Report.]
To find out whether it was just money and flexibility that IT workers were looking for, or something else, CIO.com queried dozens of IT recruiters and executives. Here are their top eight suggestions for how to keep IT talent happy -- and staying put.
1. Include them in decisions. "Good engineers are almost always opinionated," explains Eddie Cole, vice president, Engineering, Scribe Software, a CRM integrator. "They [want] to be listened to [and place a] high value on being allowed to make some calls," he adds. Therefore, to keep them happy, "top talent needs to be provided a platform to contribute towards solutions," says Chandika Mendis, senior vice president, Technology at Virtusa, a global IT services company.
2. Don't micromanage. "Excellent developers know how to create the best solution to a problem," explains Simon Tam, the CTO of Ritani, a high-end jewelry brand. Tell your team the desired result -- or the challenge you need resolved -- and let them come up with the solution, instead of telling them how the problem should be handled. This allows them to "feel like [they are] in charge of their own path forward," he says. And "when developers feel empowered to create the path, their satisfaction increases significantly."
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3. Offer flexible work hours. "Offering flexible work hours is a key reason why we [and many other companies] have been able to hire and retain top IT talent in an increasingly competitive market," says Cary DeShon, director of Recruiting, Axis Technical Group, an IT solutions advisor.
