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By Robert Hertzberg
Cindy Sheets didn't need an oracle to tell her something was wrong when she was about to take the top technology job in the Mount Carmel Health System, a network of Catholic hospitals based in Columbus, Ohio. The I.T. help desk was derisively referred to as "the helpless desk." Morale was terrible. Turnover was 46% as workers left for the more free-wheeling Web development field or for higher-paying positions.
So Sheets did something simple: She asked employees why they were unhappy. The answers led Sheets, now the hospital's chief information officer, to relax the department's dress code, offer on-site massages and increase salaries. Nine years later, no one is calling Mount Carmel's help desk "helpless." Internal surveys show Sheets' workers to be among the most satisfied at the hospital, and departmental turnover is now just 2%.
In the never-ending quest to get and keep the best I.T. employees, there is no one answer. The national economy, competing local and regional opportunities and the circumstances of the specific employee all factor in.
But a few best practices surface when you talk to technology executives about their experiences in team-building. Here's a summary.
Best Practice No. 1
Make Sure Prospective Hires Know What Makes Your Company Unique
It would be nice to be the person recruiting professors at Harvard, engineers at Google or investment bankers at Goldman Sachs. Very few hiring managers are in that position, however. And even fewer corporate I.T. executives are, since technology is typically not the main thing organizations deliver.
Nevertheless, I.T. workers benefit, often directly, from anything positive about a company's culture, reputation or position in the business cycle. Whether it's an affiliation with a world-class executive or five consecutive years of increased year-end bonuses, smart technology executives talk those things up.
For instance, Mary Springberg, assistant vice president in the financial technology department at Allstate Corp., will frequently use the insurer's status as a $37 billion company, with a wide variety of opportunities, as a selling point. Allstate's size can be an even bigger inducement when it is hiring for an office in a small city like Lincoln, Neb., far from its headquarters in suburban Chicago.
"We're fortunate in that we're at a company that is growing," adds Endo Pharmaceuticals' Gary Fling, a manager who, like Springberg, uses the financial performance of his company as a recruitment tool. Chadds Ford, Penn.-based Endo has been growing about 20% recently and now does more than $1 billion in sales annually. "With that growth comes a lot of benefits," says Fling, the drug company's vice president of information management.
Other technology managers tout the cool lines of business their companies are in. That's a natural for Alan Cullop, the CIO of NetJets Inc., a leaser of small planes including Cessnas and Gulfstreams. It also doesn't hurt that NetJets is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the company run by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
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