Best Practices in IT Team Management

Continued from page: 1

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Attrition
The attrition rate of IT manpower is the highest in BPOs. This is mainly because people working in BPOs in technical positions have very limited growth. These people are generally recruited to give technical assistance to their clients through voice or Web based processes. On the other hand, verticals such as manufacturing, education, BFSI and IT have lower attrition rates. Around 37 % of the respondents said that they have only 10% attrition rate while another 22% acknowledged that attrition rate in their companies is around 20%. On the other hand 8% of respondents said that they have an attrition rate of 40% annually, most of these belong to BPO companies. Clearly, BPOs are worst hit by attrition. As regards retrenchment, only 8% of respondents admitted that they have in past asked their IT people to leave while a mammoth 91 % of respondents have never asked for retrenchment so far, which is quite a healthy figure. To reduce manpower attrition, organizations have started taking corrective measures at their end. Around 94% of respondents have started giving additional responsibility, training, resized salary structure, created challenging job assignments with new technologies, tried job rotation, provided flexible working hours and periodic performance based incentives to their IT manpower. Only 5 % of respondents said that they haven't taken any measures yet to control attrition rate.

Manpower retention issues
Retaining experienced manpower in organizations is another key issue before CIOs, while managing their IT teams. A key concern is poaching. Competitors always try to poach on talented manpower by doling out better salaries and benefits. Secondly, work pressure and odd hour deadlines for IT teams are also increasing day by day leading to depression and mental stress. All this drives individuals to the edge, and finally they call it a day. Another key issue is the level of job satisfaction as after a project implementation is over, people feel that the job is not challenging enough. Some are frustrated to the extent that they cease to see any growth or opportunity for them. Around 45 % of respondents raised alarms that retaining existing IT manpower is the second most serious issue while 34% said that it's the most serious issue for them. About 70% of respondents said that better salaries offered by competing companies take away their talented manpower while only 5% respondents said that work pressure is the key reason for quitting. Only 14% respondents gave reasons like unsuitable postings and adjustment in work culture for their employees quitting jobs. Overall, employees being offered higher salaries by competitors is the primary concern for all.

Measures to combat stress
To reduce stress from the IT team, about 48% of the respondents adopted flexible timings for their IT teams while another 20% took IT teams for outings. Only 2% respondents said that they offer recreational activities like indoor games, gyms, coffee houses, etc. A good 25% use innovative ideas such as removing monotony from work, nominating employees for conferences, keeping them motivated through trainings and encouraging employees to use recreational and sports facilities available on campus. Strangely, none of the respondents opted for the concept of working from home as a stress buster. This concept might be gaining ground in western countries, but is not so popular in India. A few organizations might have started it for their employees but in the survey we didn't get any record for that.

Creating backups
For some organizations, IT functions are extremely critical. Therefore, CIOs can't afford to lose a single member from their team even for a single day. However, if people leave, can they ensure that this would not hamper their services in any manner? Do they have any backup plans? As expected, all of the respondents claimed that they have devised various kinds of backup plans to keep there IT operations running. We interacted with some of the CIOs and found that they follow protocols that bind employees to the organization in such a way that it doesn't hamper IT operations even if a person wants to leave. Listed below are some of the precautions you could take to prevent disruption of IT functions in case an employee quits from the IT team:
1. Make provision for sufficient notice period in the appointment letter to ensure a smooth transition of assignments to peers and managers and well documented project execution and management processes.
2. Before an employee leaves, a proper hand over to the next in-charge is required, with both of them working together for at least a week. Always keep a stand-by arrangement for key tasks.
3. A perfect documentation of the responsibilities and work, done by the outgoing employee, should be asked for. Some organizations follow a strict notice period policy (1-3 months notice is required before a person leaves).
4. Nowadays, team concept is gaining popularity, wherein jobs are handled by a team of 2-3 persons. This creates automatic backups and when a new person joins he can easily be trained by older employees. In addition, every new endeavor is documented after implementation, which also supports the new joinee. Job rotation amongst team members is another important concept and creates a knowledge base to ensure that a CIO is not dependent on individuals.

IT staff is given sufficient inputs through team building workshops. 25% of our staff is entitled to job profile rotation. Our systems have been devised in such a way that there is lesser dependence on other teams.
	M D Agrawal, Chief Manager - IT Bharat Petroleum

Training manpower
These days enterprises from all verticals spend considerable amount of budget on training activities to build motivation amongst the IT team. Around 37% of respondents said that they have a separate budget for training and should spend around Rs 2 to 5 lakh.

Another 14% spend Rs 11 to 20 lakh while only 8% spend more than Rs 20 lakh. Interestingly, 20 % of respondents said that they don't have any separate budget for manpower training while 11% respondents acknowledged that they spend less than a lakh on training their IT manpower. In addition, 20% respondents admitted to conducting team building exercises either every month or six months or at least once a year. Only 11% respondents said that they don't conduct such exercises. Such an analysis shows that employers are pumping huge sums of money for training and team building exercises in order to increase employee motivation and productivity.

HR departments use innovative ways to motivate their IT teams, for eg, conducting regular meetings of IT members across the organization and arranging get togethers/outings. However, all this depends purely on the requirements that are put forth by CIOs during review meetings.

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