Top 10 Ways to Retain IT Talent

I've been asked to serve on a panel hosted by Alan Preston of Preston Performance next week on "Keeping your Best and Brightest Technical Talent".

So I asked myself - in the best situations I've been in, what are the most effective strategies for keeping IT people around in the numerous tech companies I've worked with?

There were only three (legal) ways I can think of for employers to retain IT talent with a good measure of success.

So why is this blog entry called a "Top 10"?

Because 8 of the 10 are tucked under one powerful, yet affordable, category.

So lets deal with the easy cases first.

#1 - bribe them. Lets call it what it is. The reality is that most HR surveys show money as far from reason #1 as to why people stay in a company. However, in my experience, it is the #1 easiest way to retain someone. Note: I didn't say it was the best and it certainly isn't the cheapest!

Most people in today's world have a price... especially if you are asking them to do work in their current profession. Their price may not start off too high, but if this is your primary value proposition to an employee, the good ones will get very expensive, very fast.

#2 - challenge them. Do your technical people work on challenging projects with leading edge technology? If they do, chances are they will be so engrossed in what they are doing that recruiters calls will go unanswered.

#3 - connect them. Being connected is one of the most effective ways to retain your top talent (and not just IT talent). Connected to what? connected to each other, to the company and its mission, to your clients and to the marketplace.

People are super-charged by good connections. So plug them in and watch them flourish! The following 9 ways are really just specific cases of ways to connect your technology employees.

#4 - manage expectations. Give your technical staff regular, candid and humane reviews with their managers and/or peers.

#5 - People managers. Make sure your managers have strong people skills for leading your tech teams.

#6 - Create forums for corporate dialogue. Does your CEO give "state of the business" meetings directly to employees at least quarterly? Do your employees have a trusted forum for asking open and honest questions of senior management? I've been in environments where the most loyal programming staff asked the CEO the most difficult, painful and challenging questions directly in company meetings. It was precisely because management allowed and answered these questions with integrity that many techies stuck around when times got tough.

#7 - Make meaning and share it. Can the average techie in your company give a semi-coherent "elvator pitch" for the company? If not, then they probably aren't connected to the companies vision. If you don't have a vision, get one. As Guy Kawasaki says, "everyone needs to make meaning" in their lives.

#8 - Communities of practice. Group your staff into "skill centers". Does your technical staff regularly gather or operate in "communities of practice" where they can interact with people doing similar work (although possibly on different projects)?

#9 - Allow "skunkwork" projects. Even when your teams work on older, legacy technologies most of the time, the ability to probe and experiment with other platforms keeps a team's mind fresh and can often create unforeseen benefits to the company.

#10 - Connect them to the collective work. Does your technical staff have an ability to share and reuse knowledge across projects?

#11 (bonus) - Train them. Provide regular and relevant training opportunities for your technical staff. While this won't keep them forever, an on-going and thoughtful curriculum deployed in stages, can engage good employees for years.

#12 (hybrid of #1 and #3) - Bribe them with equity and then grow like hell! Equity is a formal and legal connection to the companies economics. As long as those economics are promising and growing, this formal connection can be quite powerful.

So...
Bribe, Challenge or Connect. The choice is yours.

Bribing is good if you don't have time for dealing with "people issues" and you have deep pockets.

Challenging work provides the IT retention backbone of most of America's dynamic, growth businesses, especially in tech sectors. I know hot-shot consultants who make big bucks, but will take big cut-rates to work on the hottest, new technology. Once they mastered the technology, they move on.

So you probably figured out that connecting people is my favorite technique for retaining IT talent. Its cheap, its effective and its rewarding.

Try it, you'll like it!