Survey: Challenging IT workers is best way to keep them

Computerworld - Companies that want to keep their IT employees happy should focus on providing challenging work and making sure they don't hire Dilbertlike managers, according to a survey of the hiring and retention practices at more than 500 high-tech companies that was released yesterday by the American Electronics Association (AEA).
The AEA, a Washington-based trade association, said the survey respondents put giving workers assignments that challenge them at the top of the list of the most effective employee retention tools. The annual survey was conducted for the AEA by New York-based human resources consulting firm William M. Mercer Inc.
Other key considerations in retaining IT workers, in order of their ranking by the respondents, include a favorable work environment with good managers and high morale, flexible working hours, stock options, the opportunity to earn extra vacation time, support for career and family goals, casual dress codes and high-quality supervision.
Employee recruitment and retention techniques "are of paramount importance" because of the tight IT labor market that companies now face, said AEA spokesman Marc Brailov. But it's becoming more expensive to retain high-tech staff, according to the survey: Respondents reported average IT salary increases of 8%, up from 6.8% a year ago, Brailov said.
The survey also found some differences between the most prevalent recruitment and retention tools and the ones that were cited as being most effective. For example, tuition and training reimbursement were ranked third on the list of the most widely used techniques for retaining workers but only placed 10th in effectiveness, according to the AEA.
On the other hand, rewarding workers with additional vacation time was ranked fourth in retention effectiveness, but it didn't even make the list of the most prevalent practices used by the participating companies.
Vince Gabriele, director of global staffing at software vendor MicroStrategy Inc. in Vienna, Va., said he wasn't surprised that a challenging work environment ended up at the top of the survey's effectiveness rankings. "The ability to create opportunity in your own organization and allow people the ability to move [up] -- that is a pretty big retention tool," he said.
MicroStrategy lets qualified employees change jobs within the company every 12 months, Gabriele said. That policy is based in part on Gabriele's own personal experience: At a prior employer where he worked for nine years, switching to a different position was frowned upon. "We lost so many people because they wanted to try something new in their careers and the managers wouldn't allow them to go," he said.
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