A recent survey shows a large number of IT professionals hope to change jobs in the very near future. Why do so many want to leave their current employer – and what can IT managers do about it?
Almost half of IT employees would like to be with a different organization soon, according to a recent survey conducted by recruitment firm Mortimer Spinks and Computer Weekly. Among the IT pros surveyed, 40% plan to have a new job in a different company within the next 12 months.
The potential turnover could be much higher than that for some jobs, according to the poll of 650 IT professionals. In fact, all of the database administrators surveyed said they’d like to leave their current positions, and 90% of CIOs and CTOs, testers, architects, and designers said the same.
Why do so many IT pros plan to walk out the door? The main reason: a lack of advancement opportunities at their current organization. About 80% of the people surveyed said they feel they need to change companies to progress in their career.
IT managers may be able to help combat those retention issues by finding ways to increase top employees’ responsibilities and offer new types of work. That can help keep the company’s most talented IT staff members from feeling like their careers are stuck in a rut.
For example, IT managers can:
- give top staffers a chance to manage projects
- cross-train staffers to help them learn valuable new skills (that can also help keep things running smoothly when employees are absent), and
- ask top employees for input when making important IT decisions.
Most of the surveyed employees also said they wanted more interesting projects to work on and more surprises from their employer (81%), as well as open and honest communication from their manager (71%).