Use your intranet to boost productivity and job satisfaction
July 27th, 2008
Jun 1, 2001 | Veronica Combs | E-Mail | Archive
Even though the recent economic downturn has loosened up the job market somewhat, recruitment and retention of good employees is still at the top of most managers’ priority lists. There aren’t as many new opportunities to lure employees away, but keeping them productive and satisfied is as big a concern as losing them to another company.
While the current economic climate may keep people from changing jobs, it also will force companies to do more with less, and keep employee productivity high.
Rick Poppell of people3 offered some help for recruitment and retention efforts in his presentation, “Managing human capital through your intranet,” at Gartner’s recent symposium in Denver, CO. Poppell has worked in IT and human resources and is one of the authors of people3’s annual compensation study. He also worked on another annual survey of CIOs, and his presentation addressed two of their top priorities: recruitment and retention. Poppell’s Symposium presentation provided a strategy that IT managers can use to address these issues.
Why retention is still a key issue
In describing the current IT staffing climate, Poppell said that the turnover rate in IT organizations is between 3 percent and 12 percent, and that key turnover issues include lack of career development opportunities and a lack of challenging, interesting work. Additionally, Poppell said that 70 percent of projects fail because the right people aren’t driving the projects. Devising a staff management plan that uses an intranet to provide job information and opportunities can address both these issues, Poppell said.
“Creating an intranet that provides information on jobs within your company and how employees can get these jobs can help with recruitment, retention, resourcing, and career development,” he said.
He also said that another advantage of devising a human capital management plan was that it allows companies to match the right person with the right job.
“To do more with less, you need a strategy that will help you use your people to the best advantage,” he said.
A key aspect of retention is giving employees challenging work to do, Poppell said, and a job-centric intranet can help managers assess their employees’ skills and interests.
Using your intranet to provide information and opportunities
In his presentation, Poppell explained how to devise a plan to manage your staff successfully and how to create an intranet that will help managers and staff achieve that goal. He listed the various types of job information that could be posted on the intranet. The information includes:
Job families: descriptions of jobs within your organization, such as application development, operations, help desk, customer service
Career paths: descriptions of jobs within job families and skill requirements for each job
Skill and competence requirements: descriptions of what an employee has to know to do this job and of expectations for the role
Employee assessments: objective evaluations of people that would include evaluations to take for employees and results for managers
Poppell suggested starting with homegrown efforts.
“Take content from various formats—human resources, the project office, your training organization—and put it in a consistent framework,” he said. “Create one portal that speaks in one language.”
IT managers can use the information on such an intranet to help people move ahead and gain new skills, and to cut turnover rates by increasing job satisfaction among their employees.
Poppell said the most important piece of this model is the employee piece.
“Employees want clear role requirements of their current jobs and visible career opportunities so they can plan their career moves,” he said. “This structure can help managers understand employees’ needs for fluidity and flexibility.”
Poppell said providing this kind of information can solve two goals at once: an individual’s need to work on interesting work, and a manager’s need to have an employee with a variety of skills.
To read more about how to organize and build a job-centric intranet, download the entire presentation.
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How does your company keep employees informed about job opportunities?
Does your organization have a formal process for internal promotions? How are new jobs announced? How does your staff know what skills are required for various jobs? Do you use your intranet to address any of these issues? Send us an e-mail and tell us how you handle these issues.