Talent drain in IT companies

Human talent is the most important resource of companies and this is a reality. Having the knowledge, know-how and know-how represents the true value of an organization.

This reality gains even more strength in an ever-changing, increasingly competitive environment where IT companies must learn to attract and retain their human talent.

But… why do talents go away? There may be many reasons why talented people eventually leave their jobs looking for other job opportunities. It is not only wages that drive them to make this important change which will affect both their personal and professional lives, but the most common reasons for making this decision are beginning to be known.

The most common are:

1) Lack of recognition or feeling valued, is one of the biggest reasons to become demotivated and end up leaving a job even if they feel comfortable with their role.

Useful tips: Have people in the team prepared to give a good individual and group recognition. It is important to take care of the emotional and physical health of those who daily contribute to the organization.

2) Do not tolerate the boss, begins to settle as a factor that goes beyond the status of the organization. American psychologist Daniel Goleman, after studying the operation of more than 500 companies, states that “most employees leave because they hate their boss”.

Useful tips: Seeking to achieve a 360o feedback among the participants of your organization could help a lot to evaluate the management of leaders in an objective way, along with climate surveys to take dimension of organizational reality that can lead to a talent leak.

3) To align skills with tasks, because if this does not happen, either because we are not familiar with the technologies or because of comfort, it can lead to demotivation or job abandonment.

Useful tips: Enable, provide and manage to align the role with the long-term interests of developers.

4) Flexibility of time, it is a fact that the schedule begins to be a problem. While work is a part of the employee’s life, sometimes things come up that coincide with some stretch of working time, or at some point it takes a couple of hours or a day for personal management, which in strict organizations can have consequences.

Helpful tips: Provide the opportunity to negotiate schedules and remember that it is important to fulfill your responsibilities and give the expected results. Reconciling personal life and work is a vital necessity. Another possible option is to offer teleworking or mixed assistance.

5) Lack of opportunities for growth and development can be a reason for job abandonment and change if people for a long time do not feel that their effort can be valued and recognized and may have the opportunity to grow in the organization or work with new technologies. If developers see that they are getting stuck, they will look for other opportunities.

Useful tips: Devise appropriate development plans.

6) Lack of balance between personal and professional life, is a new edge of the working world that grows in the new forms of work. Conciliation is becoming an increasingly critical and important aspect for many, as professional life is important, but, less and less, we want to sacrifice our personal lives in order to achieve work merit.

Useful tips: Generate constant feedback between the team workers and their leaders, detecting signs of demotivation or low productivity.

7) The emotional wage. Not only are we talking about economic aspects, but other aspects are also important and help us to retain the right talent that our organizations need.

Useful tips: Work covering various axes that make up the motivation of the human resource, offering personal recognition, career plan, creating a pleasant working space, branching work with playful days.

8) The working climate must be adequate for an organization to be healthy enough to work and remain in a job, without this being another factor of work stress.

Useful tips: Starting with an assessment of these aspects and carrying out work climate studies will help you to measure, analyse and improve the climate in your organisation.

9) Poor internal communication. One may begin to think that internal communication is a critical aspect for companies that do not yet pay too much attention to how the lack or absence of adequate communication affects employees and the functioning of the organization. In companies that are not transparent or do not communicate consistently internally and externally, there may be inconsistencies which can lead us to take the decision to leave.

Useful tips: Working with internal communication within organizations is not only a good talent retention tool but also top-level corporate communication, as it can affect external communication as well.

Times have changed and it is no longer only employees who must be “fit” for companies, but companies must develop strategies that allow them to be attractive within the labour market and keep their staff motivated.

“In a market where talent chooses, do you have a culture designed to attract the best, or just a payroll to pay them?”