Staff churn looms for skinflint employers

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 27 July 2010 09:03

IT People - Training

Australian enterprises faced with the spectre of IT skills crises should revisit their professional development programmes in order to retain key employees longer, and reduce the costs associated with staff churn.

Linda Trevor, the recently installed general manager of Candle ICT, said professional development programmes were important for companies which wanted to hold onto their IT staff, especially when skills shortages threaten. “It’s so critical to develop people; people forget how much it costs to hire and develop staff,” she warned.

Finite IT Recruitment’s general manager, Duncan Thomson, said that although skills demand in Canberra, and curiously Queensland, had stalled since the election was announced, there was robust demand for IT skills elsewhere.  Demand had returned over the last few months to the extent that Finite now had the same number of open positions on its books as it did at the height of the boom.

That meant that employers had to be mindful about the risks of losing employees to pastures they perceived to be greener. “If people are not being looked after they will look for something better over their shoulder,” warned Thomson.

Employers were particularly susceptible to permanent employee churn at the present, given the higher rates that were being offered for a range of contractor roles. “We are in a transition phase. The sensible employers are revisiting and refreshing their development plans and making sure that those members of staff they rely on are looked after very well.

The time is ripe for enterprises to beef up professional development programmes according to Linda Trevor especially with the first sniff of skills shortages on the wind, as IT staff who may have been content to sit out the downturn, now start canvassing their options. And these people have long memories, she warns.

“In the downturn people weren’t spending. Now the market has turned around, and people are thinking how they were treated,” said Trevor.