Hiring managers experience various challenges in hiring and retaining employees. Statistics reveal the numerous challenges hiring managers must grapple with now and then. For instance, one research study revealed that 63% of recruiters confirmed that their biggest problem is a talent shortage. A whopping 76% said that attracting the right candidates for the job is their biggest challenge. The hiring manager of an organization with a bad reputation has the most difficult job in the world, seeing that 75% of workers said they wouldn’t take a job with an organization with a bad reputation – even if they were unemployed at the time. The passive talent (people who aren’t actively looking for a job) in the global workforce makes up 70%, with only 30% actively searching for jobs. Lastly, the best candidates do not last 10 days more in the market.
What about IT workforce retention? Employee retention is an organization’s ability to retain or hold onto employees. A company’s employee retention measures are designed to minimize employee turnover. There are many reasons why employees leave an organization. By understanding these reasons, IT managers can take the necessary steps to enhance retention. Why is employee retention important? In the first place, failing to invest in employee retention is an expensive venture. According to Gallup, replacing a worker costs 0.5-2.5 times the worker’s annual salary. Combine this with a highly competitive and tight workforce market, and you’ll realize how difficult it is for many organizations to survive the loss of top talents. Hiring managers, especially in the IT department, must come to terms with the current state of the job market, so they know how to move forward regarding attracting and retaining IT employees. This post looks at the IT manager’s perspective of attaining and retaining an IT remote workforce in the digital economic era – the dos and don’ts.
IT Remote Workers
As we know, the world of work has changed significantly in the past few years because of remote work. Remote working has evolved the employment arena globally, and in 2022, it has grown more in popularity. The covid19 pandemic is largely why remote work has gained traction during the last three years – even though other reasons, such as powerful emerging technologies, have also contributed. Look at the following interesting 2022 remote work statistics:
- 16% of companies across the globe are fully remote.
- 62% of workers in the US aged between 22 and 65 say they work from home occasionally.
- 75% of global employees believe that working remotely is the new normal.
- Remote work has grown by 44% during the last five years.
- 52% of employees worked from home at once weekly before the pandemic.
- 74% of professionals anticipate remote work to become the new normal.
- 97% of workers desire to work partially remotely in the future.
From these statistics, it’s clear that remote working is here to stay. It’s impressive that 16% of global organizations fully embraced remote working. As the world moves away from the physical offices and organizational leaders welcome the idea of having their employees operate remotely, hiring managers must find effective ways of attracting the right talents and retaining them for as long as its economically viable for the organization. IT professionals, like other workers, also have the liberty of working from the comfort of their homes, coffee shops or any other place they feel comfortable and the most productive. However, we needn’t forget that there is a shortage of IT professionals worldwide.
Following the 2020 hiring freezes, digital transformation, product innovation, and rapid industry growth triggered a surge of tech job openings in 2021. In turn, the world experienced an unmatched demand and competition for talent on and off the market. While adopting new technologies and expanding increased demand, only 40% of organizations employed tech workers in 2020, but 66% had plans to add more by the end of 2021. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the shortage of tech professionals will be over 1.2M by 2026. IT professionals have constantly been bombarded by organizations in need of talent. With developers’ unemployment at less than 2%, the situation has worsened in 2022 – and more so for specialized technical skill sets such as cloud, artificial intelligence, DevOps etc. The shortage statistics are alarming, which forces IT managers to devise effective ways of attracting and retaining remote IT workers in this digital economy era.
The Dos Of Attaining And Retaining IT Remote Workers
The IT manager should encourage other organizational leaders, including the top leadership, to engage in the following best practices to help attract and retain top IT remote workers.
- Build A Strong Employer Brand
One of the greatest myths in recruitment and selection is that all professionals care about money. However, most of the time, it isn’t actually about money, which mostly applies to highly skilled and experienced tech workers who desire to be associated with a positive brand during their working lives. Don’t employees leave high-paying jobs for reasons such as workplace toxicity? As a result, organizations should pursue a positive reputation. They must ensure that word of mouth and the information on the internet present the organization positively.
A good way of boosting an organization’s reputation to attract the right talent is to include employee reviews on the websites. It’s a nudge in the right direction. Additionally, the IT manager and other organizational leaders should devise ways of nurturing top tech talents to make them proud of the company they work for. Organizations should also support talents they care about, assist their employees in achieving work-life balance and have progressive stances on the green environment, such as seeking an eco-friendly office. By aligning the company message with the issues employees care about, it boosts the chances of the IT department attracting the best tech remote workers.
- Invest In Tech And Teaching
While this might sound quite obvious if your company wants to attract the best tech professionals in the market, the IT manager and other leaders must ensure the company utilizes the tools these professionals want and love to work with. The desire of the majority of tech employees is to use the same level of technology in their workplaces as they do in their daily lives. Therefore, if your organization uses outdated software or old equipment, you’ve been unconsciously discouraging the talent your company desperately needs to apply.
Additionally, a company that provides ample learning opportunities for tech professionals is attractive in the eyes of the best tech talents in the market. Organizations should continually encourage their tech staff to participate actively in the tech community. As much as possible, a company should facilitate its IT staff to attend relevant community events and participate fully. It increases the visibility of the employees, and they get the opportunity to discuss topics they are passionate about and, in turn, improve their vital soft skills such as communication and networking. In the process, the company benefits from good branding and effortlessly attracts top talents in the market. Most tech professionals want a platform where they can keep growing, expand their knowledge and skills, and grow their visibility in the industry. Ultimately, it’s a win-win situation for the existing IT workers and the organization.
- Engage Creative Talent Search
When it comes to finding new talents, the world of employment isn’t short of well-trodden paths ranging from university job fairs to LinkedIn and other effective approaches. However, in a talent marketplace characterized by a shortage, an organization should diversify its ways of identifying and attracting tech professionals. For some enterprises, it could mean looking for tech workers in other regions of the world. Others would be keen on sourcing IT talent with transferable skills from other industries and so on. HR managers and their teams must engage the highest level of creativity in their talent search to ensure that they compete effectively in the job marketplace with other organizations looking for top IT talents.
While at it, an enterprise should level up its recruitment process. Since there is already a shortage of IT skills, it makes sense that tech professionals have plenty of opportunities to choose from. As such, a company’s recruitment process should be efficient and stress-free to allow snapping up top tech professionals before they consider other offers. The majority of sought-after IT professionals are never available for that long. As such, it’s important that an organization installs a fast recruitment process. Streamlining the various stages of your recruitment process could make it as efficient as needed to acquire top talents as soon as possible.
- Promote Accountability And Transparency Among Management
Many tech enterprises have increased their focus on ensuring that management teams engage directly with workers while being involved in the business daily. The modern employee wants to work for a company that emphasizes the importance of managers being transparent, accountable, and decisive. Take the case of the business collaboration software Slack. They set up an internal chat channel dubbed ‘ask me anything’ where the employees get the opportunity to ask the company’s executive team whatever they want. The executive can then respond honestly and openly to all the workers.
A highly qualified tech professional who is aware of their competitiveness in the marketplace will always prefer working for organizations that are intentional about making the employees feel valued in terms of the projects they deliver and the real difference they make. Remote tech workers who view the management team as unaccountable and unyielding, their chances of staying for the long term keep decreasing. Clarifying these processes and values to prospective IT workers will help your organization attract the best remote IT professionals.
- Commitment To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion
Every organization that wishes to attract top IT talents must pursue a strong diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. A solid DEI strategy can significantly impact your business’s performance besides helping you attract talented candidates. Among the things that IT job seekers consider when making a decision about a role is DEI. If you dont have a DEI strategy, you will lose out on opportunities to attract top talents. A research study showed that 48% of employed adults wouldn’t hesitate to move to a company with a built-out DEI strategy. When looking for top talent, you cannot afford to ignore almost half of the talent pool.
One way of improving your DEI is opening up the company’s recruitment beyond the usual sources. Rather than rely on credentials and a person’s past experience during recruitment, the IT manager and the entire hiring team should objectively consider the candidate’s testing capabilities and skills. Doing so increases a company’s talent pool and helps improve diversity. The recruitment process of tech professionals should go beyond checking if the candidates have higher educations from top universities. Pay attention to other valuable items, such as coding boot camp certificates and coding work portfolios available online. Such an approach allows organizations to give more opportunities to the many underrepresented candidates besides widening the company’s funnel when sourcing tech talent.
- An Open Door Policy
Once you’ve attracted and onboarded top talents, especially those working remotely, it’s imperative that they feel comfortable and able to ask questions or air concerns. It’s not unusual for remote workers to feel they are disturbing their supervisors by contacting them outside of the scheduled meeting sessions – especially if the company and some remote workers work in different time zones. You can prevent this by creating an open-door policy where remote and office-based employees may contact you whenever they have an issue that needs your attention. It’s okay if the supervisor cannot respond immediately when contacted by remote IT workers. However, they should ensure that the employees know there isn’t such a thing as over-communication. The challenge of working with remote workers is that they cannot tell when the supervisor is at their workspace, unlike office-based workers. Therefore, if the manager is not available when a remote employee contacts them, they should try to respond as soon as they can. Tech professionals appreciate timely feedback.
- Ensuring A Strong Rapport With All Team Members
Managers should focus on knowing their remote IT workers the way they know their office-based employees. Show interest in knowing their interests, hobbies, and career aspirations. Its normal for a supervisor to feel pressured to focus on formal matters during a video call or chat, but its also healthy to set aside a couple of minutes for small talk – especially at the beginning or toward the end of the meetings – the same way you would an in-person meeting. It could be something as simple as asking a remote tech professional how their weekend was, inquiring about their family and the plans they have for an upcoming holiday, and so on. Small talk helps remote workers to feel comfortable with their managers, and a personal connection develops. Workers who enjoy personal connections and friendships with their supervisors become more engaged and motivated to perform exemplarily in their roles.
When it comes to finding new talents, the world of employment isn’t short of well-trodden paths ranging from university job fairs to LinkedIn and other effective approaches. However, in a talent marketplace characterized by a shortage, an organization should diversify its ways of identifying and attracting tech professionals. For some enterprises, it could mean looking for tech workers in other regions of the world. Others would be keen on sourcing IT talent with transferable skills from other industries and so on. HR managers and their teams must engage the highest level of creativity in their talent search to ensure that they compete effectively in the job marketplace with other organizations looking for top IT talents.
While at it, an enterprise should level up its recruitment process. Since there is already a shortage of IT skills, it makes sense that tech professionals have plenty of opportunities to choose from. As such, a company’s recruitment process should be efficient and stress-free to allow snapping up top tech professionals before they consider other offers. The majority of sought-after IT professionals are never available for that long. As such, it’s important that an organization installs a fast recruitment process. Streamlining the various stages of your recruitment process could make it as efficient as needed to acquire top talents as soon as possible.
- Offering Emotional Support And Feedback
If you want to keep your remote IT employees highly motivated and productive and hence boost your staff retention, ensure that your company has properly organized communication. Employees should see that they are valued and that their efforts matter in realizing company goals. What can the management do? The management should maintain continuous and consistent communication with the remote tech workers. Remote employees also value timely and constructive feedback from management. Remember to praise their achievements – privately and publicly – via a suitable communications channel to motivate them and make them feel included. It’s also important that the management provides remote employees with clear goals and expectations for them to perform better. Lastly, the IT manager and other team leaders within the department should focus on building trust in the remote team for them to understand that you believe they have everything it takes to get the job done. This will motivate them to work harder and stay longer in the organization.
The Donts Of Attaining And Retaining Remote Tech Workers
Here are things to avoid to help you attract and retain highly qualified and experienced remote tech workers.
- Dont Forget About Team Building
Many IT managers underestimate non-work interactions’ role in their remote tech teams’ motivation and general performance. Shared interests and goals encourage networking and connection even when remote employees are in different cities. If you haven’t been engaging in team-building activities, begin by setting up a ‘just for fun’ channel in the messenger of your organization. Encourage the team members to use the platform to share jokes, news, memes, videos, songs, and other non-staff work. It goes a long way in bringing some fun to the remote workplace. Besides, it helps the remote employees to know each other better and bond over common interests, which helps in relieving work stress. A weekly happy hour would also do. Consider arranging virtual team-building activities such as designing team stuff with available poster makers or having drinks and snacks together through video conferences.
- Don’t Exclude Remote Tech Workers
Office-based tech workers enjoy the beauty of organic conversations that happen in an office setting. The popular ‘watercooler’ chats may become important conversations that facilitate sharing of important information. When these conversations happen, the IT manager shouldn’t forget to pass the message to the remote employees at their earliest convenience. Remote employees may feel undervalued and isolated if they are left out of meaningful discussions, which may inspire them to look for employment elsewhere. Occasionally, send employee satisfaction surveys to your remote tech workers to determine how they feel about the work environment.
- Never Cancel An Already Scheduled One-On-One.
If you want to build resentment on your team, make a habit of canceling one-on-ones regularly. While they will not refuse when you request a cancelation – understandably so because of the power dynamics in place – it will not sit well with them. Remote tech workers miss out on many things happening in the office, and the kinds of information that would spread across an office naturally associated with other areas of the organization and brief announcements. By canceling one-on-ones with remote IT workers, you rip them off the opportunity to make up for that and a platform to talk about issues they’ve bottled up the entire week. They always have so much to cover that an IT manager cannot afford to cancel one-on-one every so often.
- Dont Forget Their Career Paths
Never fall into the trap of viewing your remote tech employees as mercenaries whose only responsibility is helping you get things done. Since you’ve hired them as company employees, handle them the way you handle other employees as opposed to contractors or freelancers. Dont forget that your remote IT employees have goals and aspirations. As such, you should ensure that they make progress on their growth goals and seek to understand the career paths available to them as remote workers. Doing so eliminates potential confusion and frustrations that make employees look for ‘greener pastures.’
Conclusion
The intense competition and scramble for top tech talent in the job marketplace has made it more difficult for employers to attract, attain and retain experienced and dependable workers. As such, an organization keen on attracting and retaining top remote tech professionals should engage in practices that encourage the talent they need to apply for vacant positions and, once hired, want to stay in the long term. By practicing the above dos and avoiding the dont’s, your organization will successfully attain some of the most qualified tech professionals in the market and go on to retain them in the organization for many years.
References
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-100-hiring-statistics-2022-rinku-thakkar#:~:text=93%25%20of%20employers%20are%20doing,way%20to%20improve%20hiring%20performance.
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