Even in tough economic times, IT Leaders are still concerned about losing talent. Studies are showing that we are losing our IT Leaders at a much faster rate than new ones are being produced. On top of this, up to 30 million managers and leaders are going to become eligible to retire in the next five years. How can an IT Leader help to replace these leaders?
Defining The Problem
The loss of leaders in the IT field means that executive recruiters end up having to move thousands of managers not only cross-country but all between industries each year. This challenge has been complicated by what firms have been doing for the past few years.
In order to become leaner and reduce their operating costs, many firms have been removing layers of IT management. These tactics were a good idea when lean and nimble competition was showing up and taking business away from established firms. However, there has been a cost.
Those layers of IT management that have been removed used to provide development opportunities and ways for the next generation of IT leaders to grow. This has resulted in a situation where as the current crop of IT leaders get ready to roll off into retirement, there aren’t enough replacement candidates waiting to take their place.
Solutions Start Locally
The key to solving this IT department staffing crisis is for IT Leaders to sit down with their HR departments and establish good hiring practices in their local branches. These practices need to create a good flow of diverse talent.
The goal must to be find ways to recruit and grow employees at the local level. Once this is done, then the future leaders can be fed into the company’s core operations and this will provide a way to not only fill higher level positions but also solve the challenge of creating a diverse workforce.
Final Thoughts
Since we work in IT, we always look for a way to solve our problems using IT tools. Ensuring a steady flow of IT Leaders can be accomplished by creating an automated tracking system to identify those candidates who posses both the skills and the experience to handle new opportunities when they open up.
This type of system allows the firm to fill open IT positions much faster and with better suited candidates. If you can find a way to help your firm accomplish this, then you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
With the critical importance of IT solutions to existing company operations and increasing global competition, it’s possible that firms need IT workers more than IT workers need the firm. What’s an IT leader to do?
They say that the world is becoming a smaller place – I think that they just might be right. IT Leaders are starting to realize that coming up with ways to staff their teams so that they are diverse is quickly moving from being a political nicety to now becoming a business necessity. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to go about doing this?
