A U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics report from November, 1999 predicting
employment growth through 2008 confirms what the media has also been
trumpeting for the past couple of years: IT is hot. The
Computer and Data Processing Services industry is at the top of the
list for growth, predicted to increase from 1,599,000 jobs in 1998
to 3,472,000 jobs in 2008, a growth rate of almost 117%. Of
the 10 fastest growing occupations, the top five spots are occupied
by computer-related occupations--Computer Engineers, Computer
Support Specialists, Systems Analysts, Database Administrators and
Desktop Publishing Specialists, in that order. The job of systems
analyst is predicted to be the job with the largest job growth, from
617,000 in 1998 to 1,194,000 in 2008, a growth rate of 94%.
Yet with all this
positive news, it seems that year after year the top issue haunting
most Chief Information Officers is not one of what technology
infrastructure to select, whether to outsource or how to sustain
manageable growth, but personnel. Everything to do with
personnel--hiring, keeping employees happy and productive, fostering
employee learning, and preventing attrition--weighs heavily upon the
minds of IT organization leaders.
Indeed, the most
important trends that are shaping the IT organization of the today
and tomorrow are: recruiting, the virtual office, and application
outsourcing.
RECRUITING
The
dot-com crisis would seem at first glance to be a boon to other IT
organizations. A Computerworld article dated January 8, 2001
cites 22,267 jobs being eliminated from dot-com firms between
December 1999 and October 2000. In December alone, Internet firms
announced 10,459 job cuts, an increase of almost 20% over November,
according to Computerworld.
One
would think that these newly unemployed, highly trained workers
would be a godsend to other understaffed IT organizations. Yet
another Computerworld article dated January 8, 2001 finds former
dot-com employees struggling to find new jobs despite January being
a strong hiring month. The article cites tightening of IT
purse strings in more established companies and lack of experience
in many former dot-com employees as being a culprit for the slow
start.
Yet
while the market remains strong for IT recruiting, CIOs need to pay
more attention to specifically two areas: minority
recruiting (particularly women) and behavioral screening.
While
IT organizations have addressed many issues regarding the hiring of
minorities, even to the point of expanding overseas to find
qualified personnel, one of the largest labor resources domestically
remains for the most part untapped: women.
The Center
for Women and Information Technology at the University of Maryland
cites a U.S. Office of Technology Policy report with some unsettling
news:
Women--who comprise 51
percent of the population and earn more than half of all
bachelor-level degrees awarded--earn about one-quarter of the
bachelor-level computer and information science degrees awarded by
U.S. academic institutions. More disturbing is the trend
line: the share of all computer science degree awarded to
women in the United States has fallen steadily from a peak of 35.8
percent in 1984 to only 27.5 percent in 1994--the lowest level
since 1979.
A Computerworld article of January 8, 2001 cites a study which
interviewed 500 girls and 150 boys ages 15 to 18 about careers and
success. Overwhelmingly, girls felt the most important factor
in career success was being personally happy and fulfilled, and
shunned corporate IT as a career choice by equating it to the comic
strip Dilbert, which often depicts unhappy, money-grubbing
employees. This is all despite having equivalent computer
literacy and training with their male counterparts of the same age.
There
are no easy answers to the question of increased female workforce in
IT. Many companies try to leverage the traditional IT
workplace benefits of flexible work times and leave to attract more
women workers, as well as increase employee recognition programs
(which incidentally benefit the whole organization, not just
women). However, recruiting of women remains an issue that
CIOs should ponder in the years ahead.
At
the other end of the recruiting spectrum is the process that IT
organizations use to evaluate prospective employees and screen out
undesirable candidates. While many organizations have relied
upon skills-based assessments as their primary filter for
applicants, many also consider behavioral screening as
important for job applicants. This could constitute anything
as simple as checking references to something as complex as a
teamwork exercise.
The
benefits of behavioral screening are twofold: to identify any
behavioral issues that could affect performance, such as inability
to communicate or work in a team environment, and to identify any
behavioral issues that could lead to a potentially dangerous
employee. Matthew McDermott and the tragedy of the Edgewater
Technologies shooting on December 26, 2000 is a public relations
nightmare that all CIOs would like to avoid.
THE VIRTUAL OFFICE
In
the increasingly tight battle over IT costs, CIOs face more hard
choices than any other department leader within an
organization. IT infrastructure ranks as some of the most
expensive costs for a company, from the computers used to do the
work to the networking equipment and backup devices that are behind
the scenes. And yet all this equipment is seen as vital to the
organization's effectiveness--to cut infrastructure investment
beyond a certain level invites disaster in terms of worker
productivity.
An
new approach to cutting IT costs is to transition the cost of IT
infrastructure from a centralized campus architecture to a
distributed, "virtual office" environment. With
employees working from remote sites or home offices, the IT
organization can save large sums of money that would otherwise be
spent on new phone lines, network cabling and routers, as well as
physical plant space.
The
proliferation of low-cost high speed networking (Cable, DSL) along
with security technologies (Virtual Private Networks) and group
collaboration technologies (video conferencing, webcasting, wireless
devices) has allowed the modern technology to remain productive
outside of the company campus.
The
question becomes to what degree the "virtual office" model
can be integrated into an IT organization's culture. For some
organizations, risk management involves allowing only senior
employees with a proven track record of productivity to work in a
virtual office environment. Other organizations confine the
"virtual office" model to certain job functions (customer
service, software development). The "virtual office"
model can also lead to interesting integration with a contract
worker strategy, which could save even more money in terms of loaded
labor costs. In any case, the virtual office promises great savings
for an IT organization, and a CIO should carefully consider how best
to integrate the concept into their particular organization.
OUTSOURCING
Among
all the buzzwords in the IT industry, outsourcing holds the
most potential for cost savings in the IT organization. While
it is well known that the IT organization's core competencies should
never be outsourced, non-core competencies--even mission critical
ones--are seen as ripe targets for outsourcing to Application
Service Providers, or ASPs.
ASPs
initially caught on during the e-commerce boom of the last several
years, as many internet businesses realized that web hosting was
not one of their core compentencies. This gave rise to such
companies as Exodus Communications, which handle all of a company's
web hosting with little or no content or business process
management. Service Level Agreements were introduced as
a way for ASPs to guarantee an acceptable level of failure in their
services.
Today the ASP
world grows increasingly more complex. ASPs now offer such
services as outsourced HR, CRM, Inventory, etc. New
technologies such as XML promise to make ASP integration with
internal IT systems seamless, and business models such as ASP B2B
exchanges will allow the IT organization to shop for the best and
lowest priced solution. As the concept of ASP integration
continues to mature, CIOs can no longer afford to view ASPs as a
stopgap solution but as a continuing relationship.
LINKS
CIO.com
- Resources for the CIO
June
15, 2000 CIO Magazine Article: IS at the Crossroads
U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projects Report
January
8, 2001 Computerworld Article: If Girls Don't Get IT, IT Won't Get
Girls
January
8, 2001 Computerworld Article: IT Leaders Must Rise in Face of
Tougher Times
September
6, 2000 Computerworld Article: Oh, will you behave?
January
8, 2001 Computerworld Article: Former dot-com workers find slow
start in new year
University
of Maryland Center for Women and Information Technology
The
ASP Exchange
Application
Rental Guide: An Application Service Providers Directory
WebHarbor.com:
The ASP Industry Portal
RESOURCES
Adamson, Rick. The
New CIO: Keys to Success. WatchIT, November 1998.
Gay, Charles L. and
Wendell O. Jones. Inside Outsourcing: An Insider's
Guide to Managing Strategic Sourcing. Nicholas Brealey,
February 2000.
McInerney, Claire
R. Providing Data, Information and Knowledge to the Virtual
Office. Special Libraries Assn., June 1999.
Nelson, Bob. 1001
Ways to Reward Employees. Workman Publishing, March 1994.
Shandler, Donald. Management
of the Contingency Workforce: Shaping Strategies for the
Twenty First Century. St. Lucie Press, December 2000.
Williams, Oakie D.
Outsourcing: A CIO's Perspective. St. Lucie Press, June
1998.
Wrobel Jr., Leo A.
The Virtual Office: Supporting Nomadic Users and
Telecommuters. Artech House, July 1997.
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