The IT sphere faces the most significant staff turnover among all industries surveyed, says a recent report by Payscale. But why is it happening? How can the tech industry overcome the challenge? What’s the reason behind the low IT employee retention rate?
The IT labor market has transformed a lot during the last few years. With every new IT startup showing up in the tech arena, the competition grows, forcing both small companies and big enterprises fight for talent. It takes lots of resources and effort to recruit ideal candidates to cover hot positions. But the real challenge starts when you finally hire the perfect candidate for the job — keeping them loyal and willing to work for your company. If you fail to make the best offer, be ready to run over the endless recruiting loop.
Today, IT professionals seek for the most favorable conditions, making tenures increasingly shorter than a decade ago. They strive to improve, learn more, acquire new skills and unpack exceptional opportunities. “Stay” or “Quit” drivers go far beyond a usual compensation package and encourage companies to use non-standard approaches to keep employees loyal. In this article, we’ll highlight the most valuable insights for making your dream-teams never fall apart.
The Right Strategy
The key to keeping your staff satisfaction level high lies in your IT employee retention strategy. Having a Human Resources office or specialist is a giant step towards a healthy corporate atmosphere and friendly relationships inside the company.
As an IT business owner or manager, your company’s most important assets are the employees. By making the effort to understand your employees’ motivation and make them feel appreciated, you are also making them feel secure. An effective retention strategy should include such basic components as easy communication in teams and with managers, social benefits, work-life balance, self-development and continuous learning. Keep in mind, however, that each employee may have a different motivation, so try to cover as many company perks as possible.
Don’t be afraid to invest big, as you’ll get much more in return — CarMax is a vivid example of this statement. The company didn’t cut the expenses on workers during tough times but decided to choose an opposite strategy, boosting its employee program instead. Development plans, transparent feedback systems, extra perks and bonuses encouraged employees to achieve the highest scores, which helped the organization increase sales up to 120% in several years.
Another great employer is Google, keeping its number one position on the list of Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For six years running. The tech giant nurtures talents and invests big in employees instead of considering them as replaceable tools.
Keep Your People Interested
Help your employees reach their goals, and they will surely help you achieve yours. Usually, people move to another company because they see it as career development. Your task is to provide ambitious employees with career opportunities inside your organization. Don’t let people get stuck in their current positions and give them a chance to grow. Provide clear paths to advancement and professional growth, offer personal development plans and education and leadership programmes.
Focus on people recognition and make sure your staff knows their contributions count. Celebrate success! By prioritizing continuous growth and offering valuable bonuses for excellent performance, you hit the win-win strategy.
Consider Outstaffing
Why not? If you feel that our previous variants won’t work for you, or you have no resources to spend on your employees, outstaffing might be the best option. Rather than hiring full-time employees and doing everything humanly possible to keep them loyal, some companies consider contracting dedicated teams through outstaffing.
With outstaffing, you hire a team of professionals to work on the project under your supervision. This means that you won’t have to take care of finding the right experts, their official employment, taxation and administration — everything is done by the outstaffing software development company.
Dedicated teams may even work with your in-house specialists to cover the necessary project areas. This kind of cooperation may last until you no longer need the services of outstaffing suppliers. It might also lead to new direct hires, should you choose to extend an offer to any of your dedicated team, reducing the need to search for and recruit new people. Because it is so rewarding and cost-effective, the outstaffing model keeps gaining popularity. Such companies as TransferWise and StudyTube don’t deny contracting developers offshore to strengthen their projects. Opera, for example, cooperates with developers in more than 25 locations around the world.
The Advantages of Outstaffing as an IT Employee Retention Strategy
Using outstaffing as an IT employee retention strategy significantly reduces expenses associated with hiring direct. You get skilled IT specialists without the need to pay taxes and insurance fees for them, and without the additional expected bonuses such as corporate benefits or educational programmes. Moreover, you may decrease costs indirectly, cutting down the number of your HR, accounting and legal employees due to the lower number of people needed for personnel maintenance.
All the legal responsibility is on the outstaffing company and you don’t have to worry about termination, which gives you flexibility in scaling teams according to your project’s requirements. Additionally, in comparison to outsourcing, outstaffing gives you the power to manage employees directly and guide their activities. Just make sure that you have managers capable of planning the project’s workflow, setting achievable tasks and ensuring transparent communication.
Conclusion
There are several IT employee retention strategies to try out, depending on your budget. If your goals include having enough resources to become a top employer and making your company a dream place to work for, concentrate on investing more in your staff.
On the contrary, if you wish to optimize your resources, pay attention to outstaffing and dedicated teams. In case you decide to choose this option, don’t hesitate to contact us — we can provide your company with top-class specialists matching your specific needs.
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