How Leading HR & IT Execs Build Best-In-Class IT Organizations

Recent and profound changes in the Information Technology job market have led to a multitude of complexities for Human Resource professionals in recruiting, hiring, and retaining top-skilled talent. Factors such as a shrinking pool of experienced IT professionals, exploding demand, a dilution of talent from new technical variations, and now, the current prevalence of remote/hybrid work have collectively made locating, attracting, securing, and then retaining A-level technical talent exceedingly tricky.

Gartner recently estimated that by 2026, 75% of organizations that do not develop a strategy that includes various methods for IT skills sourcing will lack the ability to meet digital business needs fully. According to the same survey, 66% of participants disagreed with the notion that their IT departments effectively and promptly addressed critical skill needs and gaps.

Build or Buy? (or Both!)

Executive Leaders have 4 broad service categories to consider as part of their overall IT skills strategy. These include internal talent acquisition, contingent staff augmentation (contractors), professional services (aka “project work”), and managed services. HR’s internal efforts are generally considered to be the “build” or insourced approach while Managed Services is the outsourced, aka, a “buy” model.

At times, a “should we build it or buy it” riddle presents itself when considering the overall IT skills roadmap for a company. Specific business initiatives along with which critical skills need to be kept in-house with full-time employees (FTEs) can sometimes tip the scale for what to build by insourcing versus what to outsource.

Increasingly, successful leaders are opting for a blended approach while also not relying on the conventional uses for each service category. For example, both contingent IT staffing and project work can be utilized to buy experienced talent but not at the cost of giving up important company domain knowledge. ?By utilizing professional services and IT staffing, companies can bring in just-in-time technical skills with an option that also allows them to choose which professionals to hire as FTEs when culture and work traits align. A “buy, try, and build” strategy has emerged, delivering in-demand technologists while also permitting leaders to hire for high-performing personality traits and culture fit.

Cultivate Unconventional Pathways into IT

Talent teams should proactively align medium and longer-term IT needs with upskilling and reskilling “train and hire” approaches. A variety of programs exist that offer new pathways into IT from non-traditional backgrounds. Roles such as Business Analysts, QA Testers, UI/UX, and Data Analytics offer opportunities for some who have the proclivity to transition their backgrounds into formal IT responsibilities.

Additionally, as business units increasingly control their own application development efforts, the opportunity arises to reskill and guide some of these non-IT professionals into a more formalized IT practice. A 2020 Gartner survey showed that 41% of employees outside of an IT role fit the description of a “business technologist – those who customize or build apps, automation, and technology solutions for work”. These “Citizen Developers” “build low-code and no-code tools to create automation and apps in a safe and scalable way”. Today, there are roughly 4x the number of citizen developers than professional IT developers offering a vast untapped pool of talent.

Lastly, a well-defined, thought-through, and revisited IT Skills Roadmap will provide insight into where IT skills must be developed for short, medium, and future needs. Senior leadership, as well as IT and HR Execs, should gather at least once per year to evaluate and plan for which capabilities their internal IT organization should possess.

Create an Agile and People-Centric IT Roadmap

The tranche in supply versus demand for IT talent will continue to burden HR, IT, and senior leadership well into the 2030s. ?Challenging workforce demographics will plague efforts with an aging workforce moving into retirement. ?There was a significant drop in labor force participation of adults over 65 from 20.7% in January 2020, to 19.3% in January 2023. ?

Full-time remote and hybrid work arrangements have sprung up borderless recruiting. Especially for highly sought-after technical skills where competition is fierce. In fact, today there are 6.3M more filled and open jobs than there are workers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Undoubtedly, there is probably an even more dramatic supply-demand gap for technology roles which has grown at a 5x clip over every other job combined since 2009. Gartner estimates that over the next decade, there will be 418,500 tech roles available due to growth and replacement needs alone.

To combat this challenging landscape, HR and IT leadership will need a robust strategy to acquire talent. For a sustainable IT organization to thrive, challenge leadership to proactively build an IT skills roadmap that is revisited at least twice a year. Look toward service providers who can help future-proof the IT org with services that allow the firm to evolve by converting consultants who fit the culture into full-time employees. Address medium and longer-term skill needs with upskilling and reskilling programs that allow IT professionals to be built from untraditional backgrounds.

Lastly, adapt to the constant change in tools, technologies, and processes. In the end, people are still at the center of all the technological advancement. The ability to build a firm’s IT org with sustainability is dependent on an agile people-first approach.