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Remedies for Resolving an IT Staffing Crisis
BNH interviewed Ruth Lefler Tomford, a director of the Hartford Technology Services Co., an information technology consulting firm and a subsidiary of the Hartford Financial Services Group.
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Business New Haven
1/11/1999
By: BNH
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How can you tell the difference between a routine personnel problem and a true staffing crisis?
Obviously, you need to really examine your business. Look at your workload, trends in your work cycle, and where your business is going. That should give you some idea of your staffing needs, both for today and in the near future. Then make a careful evaluation of the people that you have on board. Don't just conduct a head count. Look at all the skills that reside in the talent base within your organization. That would include a basic inventory of technical skills, of course. But you should also look at interpersonal skills, as well as business and application knowledge. You need to thoroughly understand the talent that you have in order to determine what type of staffing challenge you face.
What realistic options do you have if you're in a crisis situation?
The effective utilization of your regular staff - both full- and part-time employees - is the real key to surviving a staffing crisis. They should be focused on your most important accounts or on the core components of your business. For other projects, you can hire consultants. This option has gained enormous popularity over the last several years and has proven to be quite effective when used correctly. But unless you're experienced at dealing with contractors or good at setting expectations, you could get into a lot of trouble by misallocating your work load and assigning mission-critical projects to consultants.
What other staffing options are available to companies?
The more expanded use of consultants - or outsourcing - is certainly another staffing option, and you don't have to outsource your entire IT shop. There are many types of limited outsourcing arrangements, including what's called 'co-sourcing,' where you split the responsibility for a particular function or system, either permanently or as a step to a more comprehensive outsourcing solution. The use of internal consultants is another option that we've had tremendous success with.
How do you set up a system of internal consultants?
What you do is create an internal consulting business that looks very much like an outside consulting firm - only inside your company. That gives you a resource pool that you can rotate across your business lines or draw from to work on projects with varying durations and responsibilities. There are many advantages to using this approach: Internal consultants have more of a stakeholder mentality than outside consultants, and they're usually cheaper. Another benefit is that you're building a broader knowledge base and helping to disseminate that knowledge throughout your organization. We've found that most people who work as internal consultants find it very fulfilling, which helps if your staffing crisis is the result of high turnover.
Once you've resolved your
crisis, what can you do to prevent a future re-occurrence?
Given the many factors that contribute to this problem - the national shortage of IT specialists, for example, and the high rate of turnover in this profession - you'll have to stay on top of the situation on a pretty consistent basis. Chances are, any solution you come up with will be a highly customized and multifaceted one, so you probably won't be able to just sit back and relax once the immediate crisis is over. You'll have to monitor the effectiveness of your choices continually and be prepared to revise them - hopefully, on a timely basis.
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