Strategic IT Workforce Management

Signs your Strategic IT Workforce Management Needs Help

If your CIO is skeptical about your IT department’s ability to fill the skills gap, it is probably time to look at the company’s strategic plans for strategic IT workforce management. Your resource plan should contain more than the FTEs and cost. Skillsets and capabilities for each person need to be cataloged in order to know where your skills gaps are for hiring purposes.

Here are some questions to ask to evaluate your challenges:

• Is there a clear connection between IT resource plans and the company’s long-term business plans?
• Is your management team focused on short-term tactics such as hiring contractors?
• Are your senior positions all filled outside the organization?
• When new roles and skills surface, are you able to rely on existing employee fill in the gaps or learn new skills? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need a long-term strategy for resource planning.

Prepare the Workforce for Long-term Strategy

Workforce preparations are the activities needed to build a strategic resourcing plan.  This isn’t just in regard to recruitment or resource acquisition. There is a range of activities that involve any department that touches Information Technology resources, because they each impact your organization’s skills and capabilities in unique ways. Here are the roles to consider in your planning and discovery process. 

• Recruitment
• Hiring process
• Transfers in and out of IT
• Promotions within the department
• Use of temps and contractors
• Terminations and average turnover/Retention efforts

This should be included in a focused effort to support specific staffing plans. If the gaps are significant, consider investing more money in compensation or developing an education reimbursement policy if there isn’t one.

The Immediate Benefits of Strategic Resourcing

Strategic resource management will help your IT department make more effective workforce decisions. If you focus on the plan one action item at a time, you will start to bridge the skills gap in your organization. This will reap the following reward.

• Solve immediate skills or resource gaps
• Create momentum for longer term planning

Benefits for IT Organizations

Your own organization with benefit by having a plan that provides direction in the short term, one planning cycle at a time. This provides the lead time for the organization to respond and build longer term solutions. Most resourcing actions will require more time:

• To build internal capabilities and implement an apprenticeship system for skill building
• To develop technical leaders from existing talent
• To build engagement and communities that reduce turnover

All this effort supports the perception of building a lasting employee value proposition. Career development, coaching and mentoring should align to the plans of the organization. This benefits everyone, as a clear career path because feasible for contented, investment resources that stay with the organization for the long haul.