What's the X factor dictating whether these highly talented IT pros are satisfied in their jobs or casting a wandering eye elsewhere? Not cash. Not vacations. Not even stock options. It's company-paid IT training.
"If I wasn't able to go to these sessions, I'd feel that new technologies were passing me by," Schultz said. "I would feel less secure in my ability to do my job."
Since 1999, as the Web economy has boomed and people with key IT skills have become increasingly hard to find, many companies have significantly boosted investments in internal IT training, at least partly in an effort to attract and retain IT talent.
Now, as the economy cools and dot-coms tumble, some are wondering if those investments in training have paid off and if they are still necessary. The attitudes of IT pros like Fike and Schultz, plus new research, suggest the answer to the first question is yes; enterprises like Hancock and Conexant that are continuing to increase training spending are attracting and keeping the best talent. And, experts say, despite the softening economy, people with critical IT skills will continue to be hard and expensive to find in most regions for the foreseeable future. So, they say, now is not the time to slash the training budget.
Despite mounting dot-com layoffs, nearly a million IT jobs are still vacant by some estimates. And, experts say, that number won't be going down any time soon. That's because, as the baby boom generation ages, more IT pros will retire than will enter the work force every year from now until 2017, according to a recent report by human resources consulting company Watson Wyatt. At the same time, universities are not significantly increasing the number of students graduating with IT-related degrees, experts say.
Therefore, savvy e-business managers will still focus on attracting and retaining top IT talent. And, experts say, one of the best ways to do that is to invest in training programs.
"When we survey IT workers about what impacts their decision to leave a job, at the top of the list are complaints that they weren't working on interesting-enough projects and that their company did not give them enough training," said Maria Schafer, an analyst at Meta Group and an expert on IT staffing issues.
There's little doubt that, as the IT skills shortage has intensified in recent years, enterprises have increased spending on training.
According to a December 2000 survey of 410 U.S. companies by Watson Wyatt, the percentage of employers offering skills training as an incentive for top-performing employees to stay increased from 62 percent in 1999 to 68 percent last year. More impressively, Schafer said the average training budget per IT employee among the companies she tracks doubled from US$500 in 1999 to $1,000 last year. At the same time, she said, Meta Group's research shows average turnover among IT staffs dropped from 15 percent in 1999 to 11 percent last year, partly because of the meltdown by dot-com companies. But it's also partly attributable to successful training programs, Schafer said.
And most U.S. companies report they're planning to continue to increase IT training spending this year, although not at the rate Schafer said they did in 2000. U.S. companies told Meta Group they will increase spending on IT training by 5 percent to 10 percent this year in a bid to hold on to talented IT workers.
