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September 27, 1999

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'Gold-Collar' Standard

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Thus, people involved in systems design and implementation must not only clearly understand the needs of the customer (relationship management), they must have a passion for getting the product done to the specification of the customer in a timely manner, and be cost-effective.

Managers also need to provide whatever training is necessary to keep technology workers up to date on the latest technologies. Give programmers the option to learn new languages, for example, or allow someone to retrain so that they can work on developing a new data warehouse project.

Next, IT staff should be given the resources they need to do their jobs. For example, many IT organizations are trying to reduce their budgets while attempting to continue to do all of the projects requested by internal customers. This places the IT project manager, in many instances, in the situation of not having adequate people and capital resources to do the job effectively. The pressure from lack of resources is very demotivational for individual contributors.

Last, and certainly not least, companies must offer IT workers salaries and benefits that are competitive in the marketplace. At a time when job offers are likely to come more often than before, companies can't be viewed as sluggish in keeping up with compensation levels.

Human-resource managers should consider annual salary surveys in order to develop a compensation philosophy. First, define who the competition is for these gold-collar workers, then do a salary survey and adjust your people who are below the mean salary for that job.

Some firms may even have a compensation philosophy that they will always be at or above the 75th percentile of their comparison group. The idea behind this philosophy is that they don't want people constantly worrying about their compensation-they want them focusing on their job and the customer.

Companies should also offer competitive stock options, bonuses, and other benefits, within reason, to try to lure and retain skilled people. Our research indicates that many people will accept a reduced salary for larger stock options in a startup company. Many people are not only willing to take this risk, they thrive on it because it motivates them to contribute to the company's objectives. Also, during a merger, many acquiring companies give stock as an incentive to retain the people of the acquired company. This is especially important for IT people who face many opportunities in the job market.

As IT organizations and leaders continue a rapid transformation to a business world that relies increasingly on E-business, they must put in place these strategies to keep their most valuable resource-people-satisfied and motivated. This will give companies a sustained competitive advantage while adding value to the business.

Robert A. Zawacki is professor emeritus of management and international business at the University of Colorado. He has written more than 100 articles and 16 books. His latest book is Organization Development and Transformation: Managing Effective Change (McGraw-Hill Books, 2000). For a complete listing of his articles. visit www.mtginc.com.

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