Research firm Gartner has dared to say that treating staff like 19th-century slaves rather than highly skilled staff who companies are lucky to get is probably not a good way to keep them working for you,
It seems that Big G added up some numbers and was shocked to discover that companies that IT workers are more inclined to leave their current jobs than those working in other professions with only 29.1 percent of IT workers having a high intent to stay with their current employer.
Gartner surveyed 18,000 employees globally in Q4 2021, including 1,755 employees in the IT function, and found that only four in 10 IT workers (38.8 percent) have a high intent to stay in their job in Europe.
That figure was much less in other geographies, with only 19.6 percent in Asia, 23.6 per ent in Australia and New Zealand and 26.9 percent in Latin America claiming they had a high intent to stay in their current position.
Gartner analyst Graham Waller said that companies were shocked to discover that when they ordered staff back to work they found staff were not up for that and faced mass resignations.
“CIOs may need to advocate for more flexibility in work design than the rest of the enterprise, as IT employees are more likely to leave, in greater demand and more adept at remote working than most other employees”, he said.
The study also found that IT workers aged under 30 reported that they were two and a half times less likely to stay than those over 50, with only 19.9 percent of IT workers aged 18 to 29 having a high likelihood to stay compared to 48.1 percent of those aged 50-70.
Gartner lists employees having more choice over their working hours, embracing hybrid working and using collaboration tools over face-to-face meetings as three factors that can improve retention.
“CIOs who adopt a human-centric work design will out-hire, out-retain and out-perform those that revert back to industrial-era work paradigms”, Waller added.
