Two new studies warn that more than half of IT leaders are actively looking for new jobs, in part because they are dissatisfied with the amount of C-level support they and their technology organizations are receiving.
As many as 58% of enterprise IT managers are currently looking for work, according to a survey of 3,300 “decision makers” ordered by ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho. ManageEngine uses a market research agency Vanson Bourne to conduct the global survey, which includes IT and other key business functions from a range of private sector organisations.
A second study which collected nearly 8,000 responses from IT decision-makers and employees, found that more than half (53%) were “extremely” or “somewhat likely” to look for a new job in the next year. This study from an online learning site Skillsoftsaid respondents were affected by staff shortages and wanted to earn and learn more.
Nearly 81 percent of IT decision makers believe their company should have supported them more in the past two years, according to ManageEngine research. And nearly half said they would leave their current organization if flexible working was no longer offered (48%) or if there was no potential for career advancement (45%).
“Although IT departments have been heralded as technology champions of the pandemic, their empowerment and autonomy to make business decisions is insufficient due to C-Suite constraints,” the ManageEngine study said.
At the same time they have less of a say, 88% of North American business and technology leaders believe IT is more responsible for business innovation than ever before. Another 85% say IT can lead to even greater innovation if it has a stronger leadership position.
“By and large, IT departments are more valuable today than they were before the pandemic for a few dominant reasons,” said Vijay Sundaram, chief strategy officer at Zoho. Issues related to new requirements around compliance, privacy and cybersecurity regulations are “at the cutting edge,” he said.
For example EU violations General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can lead to fines over $800 million. “This expertise [for compliance] lives in IT organizations,” said Sundaram.
The difference between “watching and leaving”
Amy Loomis, vice president of IDC’s future of work practice, said that while there are no “concrete quantitative data,” the numbers from both surveys appear high. “Demands and exits are two different issues, and a lot will change over the next few months, so the situation is very volatile,” Loomis said by email. “I can say with confidence that, based on my conversations with senior C-suite executives, they are fully aware of the value of IT workers and leaders.”
The question executives need to ask is what it takes to retain IT leaders and allow them to feel like they have a seat at the C-suite table, Loomis added.
Sundaram agreed that the figures in the study commissioned by his company “seem high,” even though he had no previous study to compare them to.
The Skillsoft report notes that frustration among IT managers is related to the inability to fill key positions. The survey found that 63% of IT decision makers failed to fill at least three positions in the past year. While still a significant challenge, the 63% figure represents a 10% decrease from 2021, the Skillsoft report said.
“The speed of digital transformation and the lack of sufficient technical resources have pushed many IT professionals to the point of burnout,” said Skillsoft. “Together, these trends feed each other.” record levels of talent turnover in all industries. Skillsoft’s report found that the two biggest challenges facing IT leaders are employee retention and recruitment. Organizations must therefore take proactive steps to change their cultures to ensure employees feel fulfilled, engaged and motivated.”
The “Great Resignation” continues
In the wake of the global pandemic, workers have been leaving their jobs en masse, a phenomenon called the Great Resignation. Each month for more than a year in the U.S., more than 4 million workers left the workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the top reasons workers say they left this year include dissatisfaction with how their employer has treated them during the pandemic (19%), low pay or no benefits (17%), and lack of balance between professional and personal life (13%), shows a survey of the job site Joblist.
Another factor behind the high resignation rate seems to be the feeling of being professionally blocked. Employee Management Platform Provider Survey Grid show that 43% of respondents believe their career path has stalled or slowed to a crawl. This trend seems especially true for younger employees: 38 percent of Gen Z workers (born after 1997) are looking for jobs with more transparency around career paths and development, according to the survey.
Of those surveyed, 80 percent indicated that skills gaps pose a high or medium risk to their team’s ability to meet goals, according to SkillSoft.
Additionally:
- The main reasons for these gaps are difficulties in recruiting qualified candidates (44%); employee retention (33%); and insufficient training costs (26%).
- The top three most challenging areas to find skilled talent are cloud computing; analytics, big data and data science; and cyber security.
On a positive note, 59% of IT departments expect budget increases next year (up from 26% in 2021), with the top skill areas for investment being cloud computing, security and AI and machine learning, according to Skillsoft.
The lack of support IT managers and workers are expressing may have more to do with the democratization of IT than anything else, according to Sundaram. In other words, companies may more often find solutions to technical problems outside the IT organization in the form of cloud services, third-party solution providers, and low-code or no-code software tools.
“Similarly, business units often have technology requirements that require quick action — a new analytics feature or integration with another application or data source — and the time frame doesn’t allow for outsourcing the work to IT and putting it in their queue,” Sundaram said. . “Another reason for IT feeling unsupported is that it may not have the right skills for new emerging needs.”
Business decision makers seem to disagree with IT managers about how much say they have in an organization. In the US and Canada, they said their IT teams are most often consulted for advice on finance (53%), security (52%) and strategic (51%) decisions. Another three-quarters (76%) say their IT teams have full or significant authority to prevent business decisions based on security and technical issues.
Meanwhile, non-IT departments have autonomy in purchasing applications and IT software (54%), facilitating IT audits (52%), purchasing devices (45%) and hiring technical talent (48%). ), according to ManageEngine. In addition, while nearly all North American respondents said their organizations had implemented a flexible work model, four in 10 reported that they were insufficiently or not consulted as their organization moved toward this workforce model .
Leaders must listen
The key to addressing discontent among IT leaders, according to the ManageEngine report, is for executives to simply listen and respond to some relatively simple needs. IT leaders simply want more opportunities to learn and grow within their current organizations.
When asked what they want most from their role in the next five years, 45% of IT decision makers say they want to learn new skills, and another 41% say they want to be able to lead change in the organization. states the ManageEngine report.
“This is in line with how they see IT evolving in their companies over the next five years; they believe that IT should have a greater role in setting strategies for organizations,” the ManageEngine report said.
“Our research found that there is a growing demand for certain skills, and therefore IT professionals with these skills command higher salaries,” the report said.
Some examples of skills in high demand include cloud, data science and IT infrastructure, all of which saw significant salary increases this year, ManageEngine said.
Pervasive technologies such as AI, machine learning and other automation generally require IT know-how, “no matter where those technologies are implemented,” Sundaram said. “Ultimately, IT knowledge will be paramount regardless of how an organization’s IT department is configured… centralized, decentralized or hybrid.”
Executives should also encourage IT leaders to reorganize their department in ways that best meet business requirements, he said, suggesting a hybrid model where a central IT department manages some IT projects while others are managed by IT staff embedded in business units.
One way the IT department may be less valuable than before the pandemic is if it focuses solely on traditional areas such as procurement, deployment and implementation of large systems such as SAP, he said.
“Companies need to give IT leaders a voice on business issues, especially when it comes to anticipating ways departments can use technology in pursuit of new business opportunities [such as] adoption of AI for deeper insight into customer behavior,” Sundaram said. “By encouraging IT leaders to take a proactive role in the business, most companies will have technology-driven options that would otherwise be overlooked. And they will have IT leaders who are deeply engaged with and valued by the organization as a whole.”
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.
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