If you work managing talent, you already know that employee engagement is one of the great challenges that companies have to face. And if we talk about IT talent, the situation is even harder.
According to a study by PageGroup, technological talent turnover is between 28% and 35%. To give you an idea, in the rest of the sectors, the average number of voluntary redundancies is between 12% and 15%. In other words, the turnover of the IT sector is practically twice.
The why is simple. In the midst of the digital age, companies around the world, regardless of what they do, need to incorporate IT professionals into their workforces to drive their transformation and adapt to the demands of both the market and consumers themselves.
This fact means that this type of profile has become one of the most coveted and competed for by companies of all sectors and sizes, causing them to move from one place to another in search of the best company.
For this reason, now more than ever, organizations must bet on taking care of the employee experience if they do not want that their best digital talent to escape to other companies with a more attractive value proposition.
The question is, how is an attractive company in the eyes of IT employees? What actions should companies implement to improve engagement and retain their digital talent?
Well, here are 5 tips that will help you to engage your most demanding teams:
5 tips to increase the engagement and loyalty of IT talent
1. Cultivate a work culture committed to creativity and innovation
Many of the applications that we use regularly were born thanks to the passion of people who dedicated part of their time to work on personal projects.
For example, at the end of the ’90s, Paul Buchheit had a messaging project that he abandoned shortly after. However, when he entered Google, it was the company itself that gave him the necessary resources to move forward and become what we know today as Gmail.
Like Bucheit, there are professionals in the sector who have their own concerns and projects.
Working in a healthy environment with a corporate culture that encourages creativity and innovation, and trusting in the ideas of the team can be the push employees need to finish motivating themselves and committing to what they are doing.
2. Facilitate flexibility and access to remote work
The market has opened up and the limits of the borders have been expanded. Homeworking has allowed employees to work for foreign companies from the comfort of their homes.
Today, companies that do not offer telecommuting take the risk of being out of date and losing talent, because it is increasingly common for employees to seek these types of benefits. So, in a nutshell, the possibility for work from home has become a deciding factor in attracting talent and generating engagement.
3. Keep your employees up to date on the latest technology trends
Technology advances by leaps and bounds. Continuous updates make it possible to improve the efficiency of processes and, in relation to that, the quality of life of employees.
If you don’t update your employees’ knowledge and skills, they may feel stuck, leading to frustration and demotivation.
For this reason, it is very important that you manage to keep your staff abreast of the latest news and trends in the digital sector. This will make your team members able to adapt to new challenges and will allow them to grow and be more competitive.
So, if your team feels that you care about their professional career and provide them with enough resources to continue training, they are more likely to stick wth you.
4. Show interest in their motivations
In 2012, Google carried out the “Aristotle Project” to find out what factors are most relevant to creating high-performing and engaged teams. The tech giant assembled more than 180 of its teams and interviewed more than 200 employees and came to a conclusion:
Engagement is generated through deep knowledge of other people. This means that as a leader, you will need to show genuine interest in the people around you. Ask them what their interests are, what motivates them, what sparks their passion… and help them achieve it.
It is very likely that if the members of your team perceive that you value them as people with their own concerns and you support them, you will create a bond of trust hard to break.
5. Create a competitive benefits package
Finally, we cannot deny the influence of economic advantages. IT profiles are in a privileged position due to all companies need to incorporate them into their workforce.
In order to compete, it will be necessary for you to review the trends in salary matters and see in which ranges the other companies move in order to keep up. However, do not forget that money is not everything.
The emotional salary plays a very important role especially for the younger generations of employees.
A well-balanced benefits package, with a salary in line with expectations along with other advantages such as work flexibility, vacation days, training, and opportunities for growth within a healthy and positive work climate, can tip the scales in your favor.
In the face of the war for talent, taking care of the employee experience becomes the ultimate weapon to attract and retain TOP IT talent.
At Team Insights we can help you increase employee engagement through our software with which you can communicate with your employees through simple surveys that are easy to answer and analyze, and thus obtain all the answers you need to meet the needs of your team.
Why don’t you start using it now? It’s free!
