How to build a strong and resilient IT bank

When they talk about “bench power” in sports, they mean the ability of a less experienced player to step in and play a big role when a key player is unavailable. For years, IT leaders have sought strength on the bench. However, these executives found that achieving bench strength in tight labor markets was an elusive goal.

Is there a way to develop a bank? Yes, IT may Develop bench strength.

The first step is to identify the talent gap in IT, where most CIOs will identify the following gaps:

In the infrastructure category, the retirement of baby boomers is one reason for declining bank strength. Computer skills have been systematically diverted from newer IT workers, who now work through point-and-click GUIs (graphical user interfaces) to provision, monitor, and manage infrastructure resources. Unfortunately, the more abstracted IT tools that newer employees use cannot always get to the bottom of a system infrastructure software error. This error could cripple a hotel reservation system and result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bookings per hour. This requires “to the metal” skills, which the baby boomers have mastered excellently.

Related:How to create an effective IT mentoring program

The bottom line for IT managers and CIOs is that they are falling short in new skill areas such as AI, but also in the older IT disciplines that their departments must continue to support and that younger IT employees have no exposure to.

Set your bench strength goals

Because there is likely a talent shortage in new technology areas and a likely talent shortage in older technology areas that still need to be supported, CIOs should consider a two-pronged approach that develops qualified talent for new technologies while ensuring that older infrastructure technologies Have talents that are waiting for you wings.

Here are five Talent development Strategies that can strengthen your bank:

Work with schools that teach the skills you want. Companies that partner with universities and community colleges in their area have found a natural synergy with these institutions that want to ensure their teaching is relevant to the workplace.

This synergy is that companies provide input for computer science and IT courses and also provide guest lecturers for courses. These companies bring “real-world” IT problems into student labs and offer internships as coursework that allow students to work with an IT mentor in the company’s IT departments.

Related:Closing the IT talent gap: cyber, cloud and software developers

The internships enable companies to advertise student talent and hire the best candidates. This allows IT to bypass a challenging job market and bring new skills to the IT bench in areas such as AI and edge computing.

There are even universities that teach skills “down to the last detail” on behalf of their corporate partners. The IBM academic initiativeAn example of this is , which teaches students skills in mainframe software.

Use of internal mentors. I once hired a gentleman who was two years away from retirement because 1) he had invaluable infrastructure knowledge that we needed; and 2) he had expressed a desire to “give something back” to younger IT workers he was willing to mentor. He assigned and supervised employees increasingly difficult “real-world” projects. When he left we had one
“Bank” with three or four people who could get on.

Not every company is this lucky, but most have experienced employees willing to provide mentoring. This can help in building a bench.

Use advisors and learn from them. At times in my CIO career, I have hired consultants who had specific technology expertise where we lacked experience. When my staff and I evaluated consultants for these tasks, we evaluated them based on three parameters:

Related:Hiring Hi-Tech Talent through Kickin’ It Old School

1) Your depth and relevance of knowledge to the project we are seeking;

2) Their ability to document their work so that someone can take over once their work is complete; And

3) Your ability and willingness to train an IT employee. Completing the project was a primary goal, but also strengthening the bank.

Give people meaningful project experience. It’s great to send people to seminars and certification programs, but if they don’t immediately apply what they’ve learned to an IT project, they’ll quickly forget it.

With this in mind, we immediately deployed newly trained employees in specific IT projects so that they could apply what they had learned. Sometimes they needed a more experienced employee to mentor them, but it was worth it. Trust and competence were built quickly.

Retain the people you develop. CIOs complain that employees leave a company after the company invests in their training. In fact, the issue became so important in one company that the company created a training “vesting plan” that required the employee to reimburse the company for a portion of training costs if they left the company before a certain prescribed time.

A better way to retain employees is to communicate with them regularly, provide them with a sense of belonging that makes them feel like they are part of the team, assign them meaningful tasks, and reward them with advancement opportunities and raises.

Companies (and employees) are constantly changing and there is no guarantee that IT departments will always be able to retain their most competent performers. It is therefore crucial to develop employees, actively and continuously engage with them and promote an open and pleasant working experience.

In this way, CIOs can improve the skills of their employees in their companies and be ready for the next technological breakthrough.