How to Avoid Employee Burnout

Given the success of our first survey, we decided to send another one to IT employees who had transferred into positions outside of IT but were still employed within the company. Again, management issues came through loud and clear. Specifically, respondents said recognition and appreciation from management was sorely lacking. There were also comments intimating that employee burnout was directly related to less-than-sensitive managers who didn't keep track of their employees' workloads. When asked what IT could do to retain its employees, respondents overwhelmingly said better management, improved leadership and more respect for employees' contributions to the company.

The findings from these surveys gave us invaluable directions for how to address retention issues. In the ensuing months, we established leadership development classes for IT management (especially for those who were newly promoted); we enhanced our career development programs to guarantee that employees are advised of their performance and what is expected of them; and, of course, I instructed management to hold communication meetings with employees to provide feedback on these findings and what we were going to do about them.

We also established a compensation strategy to ensure that our pay is competitive and aligned with the market. And we implemented a process for identifying and rewarding major contributors to the company, as well as what I call "on the spot" awards for employees who respond quickly to customer needs. We also developed capabilities for monitoring the success of the retention strategy and communicating that strategy to IT management in quarterly feedback sessions.

Such tools can be readily adopted by many companies to keep employees happy. As companies continue to harness new technologies to support their business strategies, the need to maintain a focus on the retention of skilled IT professionals will only increase. Any manager who has endured an extended recruitment process to fill a key position knows that it is preferable to keep a talented employee than to find a new one. CIOs must accept the responsibility for building the strategies and programs that will not only retain top talent, but also will provide the type of environment where IT professionals can flourish and make significant contributions to the company's overall success.

Fred Mapp, who has held key IT executive positions at IBM, American Express and AMD, is now the CEO and president of the World Congress on Information Technology. He is also the author of Mapping Information Technology to Your Business, published in July. His Web site is www.mapping-it.com