Time to look after your staff
The first signs of a tentative recovery in the IT recruitment market are a timely reminder for IT managers to consider who are...
Analysis of the Computer Weekly/SSL survey shows that the number of contract jobs advertised has increased by 20% compared with the same period last year. This is significant because the market for contractors usually anticipates trends in the market for full-time positions by a few months.
If the recruitment market picks up, it is inevitable that key members of your IT department, starved of job opportunities over the past 18 months, will consider moving to pastures new.
IT managers would do well to audit their team and the skills they possess. It is imperative that you consider who you have to keep to cover the projects coming up in the next year.
Ensuring that staff are content and productive does not solely boil down to how much they are paid. Intelligent, creative people need to be given meaningful, challenging work. They need to feel involved and valued.
They also need to feel that they are developing professionally, so look to your training policies. Because the job market has been tight for the past year, IT managers have been able to take advantage of a workforce happy just to have a job. As things start to look up, your people management skills are destined to be tested to a far greater extent.