Managing High Tech Employees

With rapid growth in the ICT sector, there is a dire need to attract employees equipped with the right skills and attitudes necessary to meet the demands of the sector. This article explores some of the people management issues that are specific to high-tech businesses and puts forward some ways of addressing them.
A good starting point is the human resource strategies prevalent in the sector. As in any other industry, there needs to be a clear direction as to what goals and objectives the industry sets to achieve. What usually happens is that while in policy these strategies exist, in practice they are not cascaded down to the grass roots of the firm i.e. the employees whose jobs it is to execute these strategies.

Prevalent in the telecoms industry, is the issue of skill shortages. There appears to be a reliance on recruiting expatriate talent for technical specialist roles. Aside from the huge cost implications of recruiting expatriate employees, the reactive posture generally leaves them unprepared to respond quickly to business opportunities as the skills required are not readily available in the country. To alleviate this issue, a succession plan tied in with the HR strategy should roll out phases for ensuring such specialist skills are transferred and that ‘home grown ‘ talent is developed.

For smaller IT organizations which may not have the financial muscle required to recruit expatriate employees, the recruitment issues may be different. With the pressure of delivering improved business results, it is a constant struggle to have the right people in the right jobs at the right time. There are vacant positions that seem impossible to fill for several reasons. Two such reasons may be; the skill sets are scarce, thus the search costs for sourcing suitable candidates are high. The second reason being you simply cannot afford to pay those candidates who have the required skills. In the former, the issue is time, in the latter it is money. Time and money are one and the same. They both steal from the bottom line. Thus, the issue of skilled employee shortages makes it necessary to develop a strategic approach to recruitment. It goes beyond being reactive to the recruitment needs of the organisation. Essential to the organisation is being proactive; the organisation has to plan and be prepared for potential recruits. This should cover not only where they can be sourced from to reduce your search costs but also what the organisation has to offer in terms of a well rounded employment package that attracts the very best.

Recent employee opinion surveys in high-tech businesses show that employees in such businesses value personal responsibility in executing their jobs well as the freedom to get on with the job without someone watching over and checking. They also want the freedom to innovate and put ideas into practise. High-tech employees also value the flexible, informal work environment that allows them personal control over working hours which partly compensates for the number of hours that they generally work. Balancing a degree of informality with good people management systems is very achievable and has been put into practice in IT businesses in other countries. Take Nokia UK for example, they operate a flexi- time system that allows employees the flexibility of earning days off as an alternative to being paid overtime.
The nature of the projects running in the industry mean that some projects are short-lived, terminated in a few months or long winded, lasting a few years. At the beginning of a project, the work and the pace of development keeps people stimulated and at the forefront of their field. However, longer projects will experience the pace slowing down and the innovative part of the work may plateau. It is a challenge keeping people motivated when they all want to be working on exciting projects.

One way to tackle this issue is to ensure that employees are constantly developing their skills and knowledge to remain at the cutting edge. As technology advances rapidly, there is a need for sustained training and re-training programmes, to keep pace with skill requirements necessary to sustain a growing industry. Thus, embedded in the HR strategy should be a competency management system to continuously manage the knowledge skills and attitudes (KSA) required to sustain the success of the business. The strategy should be a dynamic one which constantly keeps abreast with the current realities and ensures that any KSA gaps within the business are proactively identified and thus filled at the right time through a training and development plan for each employee.

In addition, broaden their skills with ‘hobbies’, give everyone something new to work on. Create projects to work on and most importantly, allow time out for development work. This ensures that employees not only have the knowledge and technical skills required to do their jobs effectively, but they have the right attitudes required to deliver on strategy. Perfect skill with the wrong attitude cannot sustainably deliver on strategy. Thus, the training and development process should ensure that employees keep developing themselves so that they, and the business, remain ahead in a competitive market.

It is also important to set up structures internally for exchanging ideas and brainstorming. As high-tech organisations grow, communication can become a case of hit and miss. Also peculiar to the industry may be individuals that are highly mobile, highly technical and possibly not the best communicators. A communication strategy may be necessary to identify the current communication issues that exist within the organisation. It is also important to establish what employees might prefer in terms of communication styles and channels e.g. do they prefer emails, the intranet or village meetings. Sharing information and ideas through established effective communication channels ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction and is equipped with valuable information essential to executing strategy. Another solution is to establish times when people can come together informally. This could be done through celebrations, refreshments and social gatherings organised by the firm. More formal meetings can be conducted at presentations, seminars and regular meetings. This will ensure employees are on top of things; it may involve them networking, attending conferences and seminars to find out what’s going on and what others are doing and saying.

Face-to-face discussion groups within the organisation spread expertise, as well as create an avenue for ideas that can be further developed. In my experience, the office plan is critical to information sharing and transfer. The benefits of an open plan office cannot be stressed more. In addition to creating an air of informality, by simply over hearing conversations from other teams, employees are able to understand and develop skills outside their areas of expertise. Whether as a team or the organisation as a whole, opportunities to get together and exploit ideas or issues are valuable as well as essential to ensuring better communication within the organisation.

Evidently, it is no surprise that the traditional performance management systems are not effective in high-tech businesses. It is difficult to set performance goals for employees, whose remit may keep changing, particularly when something new and exciting is being created. Thus, there is a need for a flexible system that will recognise that people need feedback on how they are performing: they need to know their contribution is recognised and valued and they need to plan their training and development so that can be sure that they will not be left behind. Managers should establish regular performance reviews and one-to-one feedback sessions with employees to discuss their individual progress, what happens next and to identify training and development needs. This of course means that the competency management system must be integrated into the performance management system. The performance management system should be one with clear measures; a system that predefines objectives and competencies that are measurable. In turn, the system should reward employees for acquiring skills, reinforcing attitudes and ultimately delivering results. A high turnover rate should be discouraged by ensuring that employees are kept motivated and are rewarded appropriately and equitably.

As complex as these issues appear, there is ultimately one core solution: establishing HR as an integrated strategic element of an organization. For most companies, HR started out as an afterthought, however to achieve required growth targets, HR has to be given centre-stage. IT in Nigeria is here to stay and requires a sustainable development plan on all fronts. Organizations in the industry should remember that ‘we don’t just have IT businesses, we have people businesses that sell IT services’ and to a large extent, the performance of these people will determine the sustainable growth and development of the industry.

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