More IT Resource Trends

A Salary.com Inc. survey finds more than half of surveyed employees are looking for new positions as well as reporting the top five reasons employees leave their jobs. Meanwhile, CDW Corp., a provider of technology products and services, announced its CDW Index of IT decision-maker sentiment shows a mixed outlook for the first half of 2008.

Focal Points:

• Despite the possibility of a recession, more than half of the 7,000 surveyed employees will be intensifying their search for a new job over the next three months, according to the Salary.com 2007/2008 Job Satisfaction & Retention Survey. This continues the decline in employees actively searching for new jobs. In 2006 65 percent were actively looking while in 2007 the number searching decreased to just over 60 percent. The top five reasons for leaving the job were cited as inadequate compensation (27 percent), lack of career advancement (19 percent), insufficient recognition (17 percent), boredom (11 percent), and no professional development (11 percent). Salary.com claims half of the surveyed employees would be lured away by a job offer with an eight to 15 percent salary increase.
• The Salary.com survey also illustrated some interesting trends along gender lines. Women place a higher importance on desirable working hours and relationships with managers and co-workers while men list attractive compensation as the most important factor in job satisfaction. 26 – 28 percent of the women selected these three reasons as their top reasons for staying with a particular job. Men rated those categories in the 18 – 22 percent range. Attractive compensation was the only category rated more than 25 percent (it got a 27 percent rating) by male employees. Women rated attractive compensation at the bottom of the Top Five list at 16 percent, while men placed attractive benefits and desirable working hours at the bottom of their list for staying in the job at 18 percent.
• The CDW Index showed IT decision makers are more optimistic now than at the end of 2007, but that most were expecting to defer major IT purchases. Another finding was that 26 percent plan to hire more IT staff in the next six months compared to 16 percent in December 2007. In addition, 54 percent plan to increase IT budgets in the next six months compared to 38 percent in December 2007, while six percent plan to decrease their budgets in February compared to 11 percent at yearend. The Index also found the number of medium and large businesses expecting increased IT budgets in the following six months increased by 20 percentage points.

Experton Group believes the U.S. workforce remains highly mobile, although less inclined to change jobs due to economic conditions. Current conditions have employees concerned about the job market and opportunities in their existing companies. The Salary.com survey shows that, for the most part, IT executive actions have under their control the ability to have satisfied employees. IT executives need to treat resource management systemically as a resource risk management process and address it both strategically and tactically. This must be viewed as a prime initiative each year so that the company is not caught short by too many key departures due to dissatisfaction, forced termination, or retirements.