How CIOs can guard against a tech skills exodus

CIOs have long grap­pled with tech skills short­ages. But as economies recov­er around the world, the recruit­ment chal­lenge is reach­ing new heights. 

The pan­dem­ic result­ed in a lot of projects being put on hold, notes John Nash, founder and chair­man of tech recruit­ment agency Nichol­son. But as bud­gets are released again, it’s cre­at­ing a raft of new jobs and vacan­cies. 

That’s not the only chal­lenge. Lock­downs unleashed a wave of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion that con­tin­ues today, fur­ther boost­ing demand for tal­ent. 

And in the UK, the exo­dus of tech skills since the Brex­it ref­er­en­dum has been a key issue, one that’s “had a major impact”, says Nash.

To make mat­ters worse, as many as 82% of the 2,120 senior tech­nol­o­gy deci­sion-mak­ers sur­veyed glob­al­ly for Har­vey Nash Group’s 2021 Dig­i­tal Lead­er­ship Report believe the pan­dem­ic has in many instances changed employ­ee pri­or­i­ties, which include want­i­ng a bet­ter work-life bal­ance. Staff reten­tion is more dif­fi­cult as a result. 

The prob­lem is now so severe that just over two thirds of the CIOs ques­tioned are unable to keep up with the change their busi­ness requires due to a lack of avail­able tal­ent. Skills in par­tic­u­lar­ly short sup­ply include cyber­se­cu­ri­ty (43%), demand for which has risen by 23% over the last 12 months alone; big data and data ana­lyt­ics (40%) and tech­ni­cal archi­tects (34%).

What employees want

So what’s the answer to the “Great Res­ig­na­tion”, as it’s called in the US? Get­ting into salary bid­ding wars is rarely the answer, even at a time of ram­pant wage infla­tion, warns Nash. 

“If you ask peo­ple to put their pri­or­i­ties in order, mon­ey is near­ly always ranked at three or four,” he says. “But in tech, you find man­agers or founders focus too much on that and less on the things that cre­ate job sat­is­fac­tion, which most peo­ple put at num­ber one.”

Num­ber two on the list is gen­er­al­ly career devel­op­ment, Nash adds, while loca­tion and job secu­ri­ty are often inter­change­able with pay. 

Fail­ing to tru­ly under­stand what makes staff tick means employ­ers also fail to tack­le the under­ly­ing caus­es of any dis­sat­is­fac­tion – and why employ­ees want to leave.

Sandeep Sakharkar is CIO of glob­al con­tract logis­tics com­pa­ny GXO Logis­tics, man­ag­ing a team of 1,000 peo­ple. He thinks there are four con­sid­er­a­tions for engag­ing, moti­vat­ing and retain­ing tech work­ers. 

The first is to cre­ate an authen­tic cul­ture in which peo­ple actu­al­ly want to work, while also feel­ing that they’re doing some­thing mean­ing­ful. Part of this means ensur­ing every­one – includ­ing the CIO – lives and breathes the company’s val­ues and pur­pose so they per­me­ate through all areas of activ­i­ty. “It’s impor­tant that val­ues are seen in action,” he says.

A key ele­ment here is engag­ing on an emo­tion­al lev­el with staff through clear and reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion at a group and/or per­son­al lev­el. If per­son­al, two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion isn’t pos­si­ble with every­one, it’s vital to cre­ate an effec­tive man­age­ment tier below the CIO.

The sec­ond fac­tor relates to staff recog­ni­tion and reward, which must be linked to tan­gi­ble out­comes. This means not only giv­ing praise where praise is due, but also respond­ing to good ideas and ensur­ing employ­ees feel empow­ered to express them.

Next, pro­vide a struc­tured learn­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gramme that caters effec­tive­ly to the needs of both the indi­vid­ual and the busi­ness. This is linked to the fourth and final piece of the puz­zle: ensur­ing effec­tive, tai­lored career devel­op­ment and a clear career path. 

“Attri­tion is a real­i­ty for every­one and it’s impos­si­ble not to have it,” Sakharkar says. “So to suc­ceed today, you real­ly need to have a struc­tured, inten­tion­al focus on all of these four areas, and also track your pro­grammes to see how they’re per­form­ing against objec­tives.”

Challenging work

Mark Mur­phy is direc­tor of HR at BT’s Tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness, which employs about 11,000 peo­ple. He thinks that in the tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty, there’s a close link between staff reten­tion and offer­ing inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing work. 

While you’ve got to be cred­i­ble on com­pen­sa­tion and oth­er basic require­ments, “the intrin­sic nature of the work, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate some­thing new, and the cul­ture and pur­pose of the busi­ness are the ele­ments that make employ­ees want to stay,” he says. “Peo­ple tell us that it’s keep­ing them stretched that keeps them here, which includes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn new skills and work in dif­fer­ent parts of the busi­ness.”

But Mur­phy believes CIOs them­selves also have a major role to play in reten­tion terms. 

“An inspi­ra­tional tech leader is super-impor­tant both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly,” he says. “Exter­nal­ly, build­ing pride in what the team is doing helps build momen­tum and recog­ni­tion of achieve­ments, but inter­nal­ly it’s about inspir­ing peo­ple and set­ting the tone for what mean­ing­ful work is.”

Nash agrees. “The old adage that ‘peo­ple don’t leave com­pa­nies, they leave man­agers’ is as true today as it ever was, espe­cial­ly in tech, as all too often peo­ple with strong tech­ni­cal skills are put in charge of peo­ple with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly being the best peo­ple man­agers,” he says. 

As a result, Nash believes the secret to reten­tion is under­stand­ing why employ­ees might want to leave and cre­at­ing an atmos­phere in which they want to stay.

“It’s about get­ting the man­age­ment team right because if peo­ple feel val­ued, lis­tened to and recog­nised for what they do, if they have a good work-life bal­ance and a clear career path, they won’t leave as they’ll know they’re work­ing for a great employ­er.”