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September 14, 1998

CIO Forum: Be A Choice Employer

Raymond Caron CIO, Cigna Corp.

hat makes an employee want to stay with a particular company? That question looms large in boardrooms around the country during today's tight job market. CIOs face an especially difficult task, with demand for qualified IT professionals at an all-time high. It has become one of our prime responsibilities: keeping turnover rates down and filling positions critical to the success of the IT operation.

At Cigna Corp., we began 1996 with an IT staff turnover rate of 5.6% and an ample supply of human resources. But as competition for IT jobs heated up, we saw our turnover rate rise and resource pool empty. That's when we took steps to manage the situation aggressively.

Early on, we decided against competing dollar-for-dollar with signing bonuses. Rather, we set out to create an "employer of choice" strategy: We made people want to work here by offering competitive salaries and benefits, promotion programs, and creating new incentives and opportunities. With this strategy, we've been able to bring the turnover rate to half the industry average and fill new positions. To help attract and recruit new people, companies may want to try some of the strategies that have worked for Cigna.

Create a series of image advertisements to replace text-heavy ads. The ads should depict employees in home settings and other places, promoting the idea that work is just one of many aspects of our lives. These ads should not only run in various publications, but be taken to job fairs and college visits.

Cast the net further by expanding your use of external technology training and staffing services. For example, Chubb Computer Services' Top Gun program matches companies with recent college graduates and experienced business professionals who wish to change careers.

To help assess and develop existing staff, managers may want to create what we call a Professional Growth and Development tool, which lets us help our people build and sustain the skills they need to succeed. A key component is a skill matrix that, depending on an individual's job, clearly shows the relative importance of one skill to another.

Another tool, Leadership and Assessment and Development, consists of a 360-degree feedback mechanism that generates a report about an employee's strengths and weaknesses. Coaching sessions can help people reach their potential, putting them on a fast track to leadership positions.

To retain employees, managers need to assess who among their staff is most vulnerable to external job offers and develop a plan to address that. Still, most people want to continue learning new skills and face different challenges. Managers should be encouraged to focus on employee development and to use assignment rotations to make jobs more appealing.

Organize your application development staff so those who love to use technology to solve business problems are aligned with business divisions, and those who prefer to work with heavy-duty technology programs are affiliated with a centralized technology services area. Obviously, having applications built by people who love doing that work will be a boon to the business divisions.

Another way to attract workers with software development skills is to adopt the disciplines of the Software Engineering Institute, which was established by Congress at Carnegie Mellon University to institutionalize excellence in the software industry. To help bring identity to those people with the nonglamorous jobs of maintaining legacy systems, create a Center of Excellence for maintenance.

Some of the decisions we made years ago about how we're organized at Cigna is paying off big for us now, as present and potential employees make important career decisions. We realize no structure and strategy will influence those who want most to work in Silicon Valley or Redmond, Wash. But we also know we've got a good shot at finding and keeping many others who have the skills important to our business.

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