Copyright 1997 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 1, Spring 1997, pp. 62-64. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

Readers Respond

However, as the market for specialists heats up, like networking and client/server computing, employees are leaving for 20 percent increases without much regard for the other benefits of working here. Salary programs do not generally accommodate 20 percent salary increases nor react quickly to the marketplace, again making it difficult to keep people.

In general, employees with several years of experience at UT-H who have worked elsewhere are staying because of the pluses listed above. They know that they will catch up salary-wise, and they will benefit in the long run.

Rick L. Miller
Assistant Vice President of Information Services
[email protected]

Higher education can present an environment that nurtures both the professional and personal goals of its work force, and our experience has been that there are many talented individuals in the mid-'90s who are willing to trade the high prioritization of compensation for a quasi-ownership in relation to their workplace. Our approach has been to avoid a hierarchical staffing structure while mixing and matching staff according to expertise on permanent and/or ad hoc subgroups in order to arrive at a set of road maps created with as collective a voice as possible. We have realized some very creative solutions, and the staff has been able to gain experience in many areas often peripheral to their specific job function. The bottom line is that if an organization can be about people to the same extent that it is defined by its goals, there will exist a tendency for those involved to remain involved.

Peter Greco
Director, Information Systems
[email protected]

1. Sell the job to applicants, but be honest. Ask the applicant what she or he wants from the job and find a way to provide this. If it's impossible, then it's not a good fit, and the employee will be unhappy or will leave, even if from your standpoint he or she is doing a good job.
2. If you can't offer salaries that are competitive with the corporate world, be sure to point out things like tuition benefits, more liberal vacation policies, or a casual dress code, that can balance slightly lower salaries.
3. Cast a wide net for good employees. Do not limit your search even implicitly by age, social class, appearance, or degrees. Keep an open mind.
4. Turnover is easier to handle if it is anticipated. Keep channels of communication open. Let employees know you don't expect them to stay forever and want to help them with their next career move. This will give you more time to prepare for turnover.
5. Give a bonus to employees who take up the slack when someone leaves and has not yet been replaced. This can be a very cost-effective way to make transition periods smoother.
6. Use fixed-term appointments such as two-year internships to help control turnover at the entry level, especially in areas of high burnout such as supervising student workers and computer lab support.

Janet Price
Chief Information Officer
[email protected]

Due to the difficulty of hiring staff with technical specialties such as Oracle programming or UNIX systems management, we have decided to use a combination of in-house and outsourced training to develop those key skills in staff we already have. We also hope to foster a peer-support network among staff who go to classes together. Systematic training and peer networking will allow us to hire, in many cases, less experienced workers with excellent learning potential and to develop them quickly. Although this investment in training is likely to increase the ability of these workers to leave for higher-salaried jobs in the commercial sector, we believe we will nevertheless benefit from better productivity and improve staff morale and retention.

A new, grant-funded position has been created at Hampshire College to coordinate IT staff training at the five colleges and to develop a shared pool of knowledge resources (e.g., online documentation, FAQs, Web links) to assist front-line support staff. The diversity of systems and applications on campus, we've discovered, places unusually high stress on support staff. Building a better knowledge base to draw on may help them cope more successfully with the demands on their expertise.

We are also committed to creating forums where staff engaged in similar work at the member institutions can get together, share information, and become acquainted. Knowing whom to call for specialized advice is one of the most frequent requests from technical staff. The forum, we believe, will decrease feelings of isolation and frustration and improve retention and recruitment.

Thomas A. Warger
Assistant Coordinator for Information Systems
[email protected]

It is clear that we are competing at a disadvantage with corporate employers who typically pay more for equivalent positions. The skills required to manage an enterprise network are the same whether the site is on a college campus or in a corporate "power tower."

Parkland College has responded to the issue by examining our salary structure and by increasing our investments in staff training and professional development.

We strive to create a workplace environment where employees are able to learn and grow as fast as they wish. Some days it seems as if we are running a talent development agency for the corporate raiders who keep dangling juicy carrots under the noses of our crew!

People who can design and manage top-notch information systems do not work exclusively for money. If they did, many more would leave education for the more lucrative paychecks in business.

Our folks are motivated by the need for recognition, for a reasonable degree of freedom in their work, and most of all by their appetite for hard fun as part of a team that cares about its profession.

At the same time, it's clear that schools will have to become more competitive with salaries, or we will have a tough time keeping our best and brightest.

Michael Miller
Dean, Academic Technologies
[email protected]

There are two ways to decrease employee turnover and to give each employee a sense of purpose and a sense of significance.

Management must develop a compelling vision of where the organization is heading and let each staff member know his or her place within that vision. Each employee should have and know his meaningful role within the organization. A significant part of a meaningful role is to be challenged. Staff members should be encouraged to work at their highest level and also be given the resources to improve their capabilities.

To give each employee a sense of significance, management should develop a culture where every member of the organization is valued and treated with respect. Managers should be trained to value and encourage individual initiative and creativity. Staff members should be rewarded for a job well done, and be corrected promptly and positively when a task is not performed well.

Staff members should be given tasks which are within their capabilities, have the tools (resources, training, and management support) to perform these tasks, and be rewarded when a task is completed properly. Employees should be given a high degree of autonomy and authority to go with the responsibility to perform their tasks. The sense of place provides employees with motivation to perform their tasks well, and the sense of significance provides staff with the tools and support they need to complete the job. When used together, purpose and significance are mutually re-enforcing, building a stronger and stronger commitment to an organization.

Jim Scanlon
Director, Information Technology
[email protected]

We also try to equip the staff with up-to-date tools and allow them to "play" with new technology as often as feasible. Having new toys does seem to help us retain some of our technical folks. We also treat them as professionals and empower them to solve problems on their own. All these techniques help, but we still sometimes lose valuable staff.

We have also gotten creative with career paths. In the past couple of years, we have promoted operators into network support and help desk staff into programming positions. We even hired a person on the help desk from the college counseling office. In many cases, we can teach people about the technology if they have the other career skills to succeed.

When employees decide to look for another job to further their career, we usually encourage them and help them as much as possible. We also keep in touch with them and let them know of position openings. Recently, we hired two people back into the department who had left in the past. We were able to attract them into better positions than they had left. And because they were familiar with our environment and our customers, they were able to hit the ground running.

Ray Grant
Director, Information Technology Services
[email protected]

Summer 1997 Readers Respond Question

Please send your response along with your name, title, e-mail address, phone, and fax numbers by electronic mail to Elizabeth Harris, [email protected].