This year, we observed a tension between what employees tell us keeps them at their jobs and what CIOs and managers think they need to do to retain their employees. On the one hand, employees cited factors related to well-being and work/life balance as critical for keeping them at a job. On the other hand, obstacles to employee effectiveness and factors CIOs and managers ranked as most important to maintaining their workforce are both related to human and financial resources, which are very traditional concerns.

A competitive salary and good benefits are often thought of as the most important features that organizations use to recruit talent, but what factors are the most important to retaining IT professionals in higher education? The nature of work has changed considerably in the 21st century, and it stands to reason that the job factors employees value may be changing as well. To better understand employee retention, we asked IT professionals to rate how important different factors are at keeping them at an institution. As they were in 2016, factors related to overall well-being were rated as most important, with "quality of life" and "work environment" at the top (see figure 10). When looking by demographics, men, women, Gen Xers, and Millennials rated quality of life highest. Staff and managers rated this factor first, followed by work environment, and CIOs said work environment was only slightly more important than quality of life. While a competitive salary can be critical to attracting the most skilled or experienced candidates, our respondents rated monetary compensation in the middle of the pack as a reason for keeping them where they are. While quality of life is subjective, it is commonly associated with aspects of physical and mental health and well-being.1 So it seems that offering benefits, perks, and programs related to these areas can be helpful in retaining skilled employees.

Participants were also asked to rate the extent to which certain circumstances, skills, and deficiencies were obstacles to their effectiveness in their current positions. Much as they told us when we asked about the skills needed to maintain an IT workforce, respondents most frequently cited general finances and human resources as playing a critical role in assessing their on-the-job effectiveness (see figure 11). CIOs, managers, and staff all rated "insufficient IT staff resources (in general)" as the number one major/critical obstacle to effective job performance, indicating that higher education IT may be feeling the labor shortages that other industries are experiencing.2 In contrast, IT employees across organizational levels rated gaps in abilities and skills at the bottom, which is a trend that is holding from 2016.

Given these financial and staffing issues, only slightly more than half of respondents (52%) said it was important to them to work in higher education rather than in another industry or area. However, nearly half of respondents said they would possibly (25%), probably (11%), or definitely (11%) look for employment opportunities outside their current institutions in the next year, which is a decrease of only two percentage points from 2016. These results were similar across organizational levels and Carnegie class, which suggests institutions may experience issues retaining talent, especially in light of US economic growth and low unemployment rates that have resulted in the number of job openings outpacing the qualified labor pool in 2018.3 These economic circumstances may be problematic for higher education IT, as recent research has forecast that talent shortages in technology will continue to grow globally over the next several years,4 with deficits already being reported in information security5 and software development.6

With respondents also reporting that the skills/positions in the shortest supply are those related to security, higher education IT should consider creative approaches to address retention issues. Work/life convenience benefits7 that impact quality of life, such as flextime and telecommuting, are low-cost options that can help employees be more agile in balancing their job duties with personal responsibilities, especially if more competitive salaries aren't in the budget. Recent research suggests more-flexible working hours, vacation time, and at-home work options are highly desirable, second only to better health benefits, when considering a lower-paying job with better perks versus a position with a higher salary.8 Creative approaches like these can also help IT units establish a more diverse workforce and contribute to gender equity, because flextime is highly valued by women9 and can help reduce gender-related pay gaps, particularly for hourly employees.10

CIOs and managers were also asked to rate the importance of various factors in maintaining an IT workforce to adequately meet the needs of their institutions in the next three years (see figure 12). As in 2016, the factors that ranked in the top five reflect the importance of sufficient financial and human resources. CIOs and managers agreed that competitive compensation  and additional budgetary resources were the most important factors in meeting institutional needs. There seems to be a disconnect in this area between leadership and staff because those in leadership positions put compensation at the top, while staff rated salary below other factors such as quality of life in keeping them at an institution. Respondents rated additional staff positions in the top five; however, they also put using more contract employees and contracting/rehiring retirees at the bottom, which suggests that even though managers and CIOs believe having more staff is important, hiring contractors may not be considered a viable means of building capacity. More managers than CIOs told us flextime and telecommuting were important in maintaining their workforce; managers likely have closer working relationships with their staff than CIOs and therefore may have a greater sense of how more creative management options would meet the needs of their employees.

In open responses, participants also most frequently reported that positions/skills related to security were in the shortest supply at their institutions,11 followed by management,12 database administrators, developers, and network and system administrators. Given that information security was rated number one on the list of Top 10 IT Issues, 2019 (and the three years prior), IT units should focus their efforts on hiring, training, and retaining talent in security-related areas to meet their institutional needs.