Beancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and reached the conclusion that only 29.1 percent of IT employees have solid plans to stay with their current employer.
In its latest Global Labor Market Survey, the number crunchers at Big B said that depending on where those IT workers are located, that number can be much lower.
In Asia, just 19.6 percent have a high intent to stay in their current job while in Australia and New Zealand, just 23.6 percent feel the same. In Latin America, the number is 26.9 percent. Even in Europe only four in 10 IT workers expect to stay in their current organisations, according to the survey.
In general, IT workers are 10.2 percent less likely to stay in a job than non-IT employees, according to the survey. This is the lowest out of all corporate functions.
For many IT employees, who are now in peak demand because of the pandemic and the rise of the hybrid workplace, it’s a time for career and life reflection.
Gartner vice president Graham Waller said: “IT workers will never have more choice than now.”
The Gartner Global Labor Market Survey includes more than 18,000 employees in 40 countries, including 1,755 employees in the IT function in Q421.
Gartner’s survey showed 65 percent of employees feel the pandemic has made them rethink the role work plays in their lives. And 58 percent indicated the pandemic has changed their perspective on the desirability of their current workplace location.
“IT is a super-heated labour market, right now,” Waller said. “There’s a great talent competition going on there. Sometimes we even compare it to the competition to get top athletes — particularly in key skill areas, such as cybersecurity, data science, cloud and agile development, etc.”
For the first time since Gartner began the Global Labor Market Survey 10 years ago, work-life balance tied with pay as the top reason IT pros choose a new job.
The IT talent retention challenge varies by age group and region. For example, IT workers 30 years and younger indicated they’re 2.5 times less likely to stay at an organisation than those over 50. Only 19.9 percent of IT workers who are 18 to 29 had a high likelihood of staying put, compared to 48.1 percent of those aged 50-70 years, according to the survey.
