Want to know how to stop losing your IT staff?
You can’t...
But there are some key things you can do to help.
A wise person once said ‘There is nothing permanent except change‘ - Heraclitus.
It is however very frustrating when you lose someone great or have a gap and it’s putting pressure on your team.
Be good to them and you never know, they just may come back. The grass is not always greener and it’s not unheard of to have ‘new job remorse’.
In this past crazy couple of years, which you may have seen coined the ‘Great Resignation’, people are leaving jobs more than they used to, with the effects of Covid & WFH coming home to roost. There are more stories emerging of people having epiphanies - realising they don’t want to do their current job and seeking more purpose. It’s also had a massive effect on crystallising what you actually do as a job and some people have realised they simply don’t want to be doing that anymore. Gone are any of the trimmings of prestige - swanky offices in the heart of the city, after work drinks etc as you log onto another zoom meeting at home in your ugg boots with the kids (or flat mates) screaming. It’s also highlighted poor processes, inadequate IT (legacy) systems, inappropriate tooling or bad management. But some of us are returning to offices and the new normal seems to be the hybrid model - 2 or 3 days of WFH and the rest in the office with flexibility. depending on what suits you.
So what can you do to retain your IT staff?
3 key things we often talk about at Sunstone which if you get right may help you to retain staff:
Interesting work - software engineers & IT people tend to want to solve interesting problems and build meaningful or purposeful stuff. There are all sorts of different domains in IT so if the domain isn’t particularly hot then look to interesting and new technologies, methodologies & approaches. Always be improving your environment - utilise sand pit projects etc. Creative people may get bored easily but everyone is a bit different and everyone has their own goals.
Good work environment, benefits & tools to do the job. The most consistent cultures are those where you have a friendly, positive work culture which aligns to your values & where people can be themselves. Nice modern offices, insurances (medical, life, salary protection) training / professional development, industry discounts & flexibility. Techies tend to be life learners so training is a huge one here, and most professionals want to keep on improving and mastering new things in their career. If you offer great training / professional development it’s a win-win. Flexibility is the biggest (and research always finds this is the key thing people look for in a new job especially working parents) and for good reason. The feedback we are seeing more and more now relates to how important flexibility is in a role.
Pay market rate - salary is not a motivator but it is a demotivator. What do we mean by this? People just want to be paid fairly, not get ripped off and are happy with something that is reasonable.
if you stick to the above you will retain good staff more often. There is always a bit of turnover, industry standard is that up to 10% is fairly healthy as people leave jobs for all sorts of reasons which are often beyond an employer’s control. You just don’t want to have people leaving for reasons that are industry standard and that you can influence. And in our experience, the ones who are always chasing the money will always be chasing the money so we tend to advise just to let them go.
If you have specialist skills or are growing another tip is always be open to taking on people as you can’t make up the timing when someone good turns up especially in NZ currently with the borders closed.
I hope this helps in these unusual times and remember it’s normal to feel anxious at the moment so take care of yourself and others and be kind :-)
I'm Paul, I love coffee, dogs (+ cats) & biking. Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment & HR company specialising in recruiting IT roles within software, web, mobile, blockchain, big data, cloud infrastructure, security & networks in Christchurch & South Island of New Zealand.