2023 is expected to be a challenging year for employers in the IT sector. The UK is experiencing low growth, rising interest rates and high inflation yet demand for technical services and staff in the UK remains high.
The trade association, techUK, has forecast the UK has the potential to create a further three million new technology jobs by 2025. They note “These jobs are generally highly skilled and pay substantially more than the average UK salary.” This raises the questions – do we have a suitable number of qualified people in the UK to fill these positions, and what does this mean for existing employers in the IT sector?
According to Computer Weekly, in August 2022 the UK saw an average of 750 new job advertisements go live each day just in the field of software development. At this time, there were around 30,000 related positions generally available on jobs website Indeed. This suggests we may not have enough talent in the UK to fill such positions. Consequently, with such demand, it’s not surprising that employees feel confident about securing alternative employment should they choose to leave their current positions. The IT recruiter Randstad conducted a recent survey asking technical professionals if they felt confident about moving to a new job. They found that 75% of employees surveyed felt confident, or very confident, about being able to secure another job.
With such high employee confidence, available choice, role competition and with salaries generally on the rise, how might companies retain their existing staff?
It could be argued that staff turnover can be positive. It can bring new energy to a team. New staff can also bring alternative views, ideas, and experience. While there’s no doubt this can be true, when turnover is regular, and staff cannot be reliably retained, companies can lose their talent, experience, continuity, and ability to deliver. Where staff are also customer-facing, high staff turnover can deplete customer confidence. From a financial perspective, in the same article quoted earlier from recruiter Randstad, they noted that on average, it costs between 6 and 9 months of an employee’s salary to find a suitable alternative. Should staff turnover be high, you can quickly see how damaging this can be for an employer. In a buoyant employee-led market, it clearly makes financial sense to retain as many key staff members as possible.
At DCS we’ve been able to retain our staff fairly well over the years. We’re proud to say that more than half of our staff have been with us for over 15 years. Some much longer. In my field of software development, we have a team with an average of 18 years’ worth of continuity of employment. This comes with many benefits to DCS. Such a wealth of experience and knowledge allows us to react quickly to new opportunities whilst keeping things familiar for existing clients. We’d hope this helps our customers trust us. Knowing names and faces can be very important.
So, what keeps our staff at DCS?
There are a variety of reasons. Working from home, or at least some hybrid working, has become the norm in recent times but it’s something we’ve been offering our employees for over 15 years. Trust in our people has been there for a long time. Our team know what’s expected but they also know there’s a level of flexibility to their working patterns. Varied projects keep things interesting, and we try to avoid positions where someone’s role becomes repetitive. We offer staff freedom in the choices they make. With that responsibility comes a sense of pride when decisions made have a positive outcome on a project. A good decision, and going the extra mile for the company, doesn’t go unnoticed. The staff also have a voice and people in management positions who are prepared to listen. This counts for a lot.
While there’s no doubt we need to remain vigilant and innovative with how we treat and reward our team in the upcoming years, we’d like to think we’re in a good position to retain the majority of our key members of staff. In these exciting times, this is important, and it allows us to keep delivering quality solutions for our customers.
As well as retaining our staff, we’re always keen to add new talent to the family so if you fancy a new challenge and to be part of a valued team, why not have a look here and get in touch?
Sources:
TechUK:
Computer Weekly:
Randstad:
SHRM: