Voluntary employee turnover is a common and particularly frustrating challenge faced by enterprise IT leaders. Compared to other job functions, the technical skill sets found in IT are highly transferable and are currently in high industry demand, a combination that creates a wealth of outside opportunities for talented IT specialists. Understanding the causes of employee defection will help IT leadership to intelligently address them.


The IT Retention Challenge
Based on estimates from over 1,700 IT decision makers, the Info-Tech 2007-2008 Budget & Staffing survey found that the average IT turnover across all industries will exceed 13% this year - not necessarily high compared to other business areas, but certainly substantial. Considering the time and investment that often goes into onboarding an IT employee into a specific technical role, possibly including extended one-on-one training, this level of turnover reflects a significant annual expense.

Moreover, with the critical nature of certain IT positions, such as a chief network or database administrator, a sudden defection also looms as a potential immediate risk to operations. Although ongoing knowledge transfer and cross-training may be common departmental objectives, spare cycles and resources are typically scarce, and the unanticipated departure of key IT staffers can still be devastating.

The fact that the reasons for IT employee voluntary departure are inconsistent only complicates the matter. Some employees may leave due to dissatisfaction with their position in the company or the organization itself, while others may have simply found a comparable position elsewhere but with markedly increased compensation. Regardless, IT employees that have marketable experience and technical competencies, including industry certifications, have the flexibility to make a move at any moment.


Building a Regular Feedback Loop
A 2007 Computerworld study, "Best Places to Work in IT, found that 42 % of organizations formally survey IT employees on job satisfaction once per year, and that a further 24% do so more than once per year. Only 3% do not have any formalized feedback, indicating that most organizations have recognized the importance of this mechanism. Regular survey feedback provides management with a high level view of the concerns within the IT group. Satisfaction-based questions should cover the following areas:

" Job (responsibilities, training, professional development, career path)

" Environment (team atmosphere and diversity, flexibility)

" Manager (communication, availability, guidance, review frequency)

" Department (recognition, leadership, compensation and bonus structure)

" Company (corporate reputation, employee pride, community involvement)

However, given the individual nature of departure, regular one-on-one meetings between IT managers and direct reports are also very important. Scheduled sessions are simply more effective for gauging individual issues and concerns than a passive, open-door policy, and because IT shops are typically smaller in comparison to other groups, these should be feasible. Ideally, these meetings will provide managers with an opportunity to understand and in some cases allow them to proactively address employee concerns; at the very least, they will allow a manager to anticipate an impending departure.


Recommendations
1. Learn the reasons for departure. Annual or bi-annual IT employee satisfaction surveys will allow individuals to express their job and career concerns in confidence and provide IT leadership with an overview of relevant issues and emerging trends.

2. Take a case-by-case approach for IT staffers. Scheduled bi-weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports will help bring underlying individual concerns to the forefront and up for open discussion. These sessions will also help strengthen relationships with individual team members and provide busy managers with a regular opportunity to provide recognition, the importance of which cannot be understated.

3. Explore realistic actions to address satisfaction issues. While departments are often limited in the extent of changes they can make to curtail turnover, improving transparency (including being transparent when people do leave) and formalizing the feedback and review structure are actionable tasks that can be implemented with limited investment.


Bottom Line
Employee turnover is an expensive problem for many IT organizations, and it is one that quite simply does not have an easy solution. Creative strategies to prevent or limit defection are worth exploring, but devising effective retention tactics will first require an understanding of the real reasons behind voluntary departure.