Instead of such diatribes, we need to realize that whenever there are opportunities, people will seek greener pastures. Gone are the days of steadfast loyalty of employees to their masters or to their organization. We now have independent thinking individuals with high ambitions — people set their sights on bigger things in life. Staff attrition is here to stay, and we better understand how to deal with this situation in order to mitigate this risk.

Having said that, I admit that the task is easier said than done. Getting our tasks executed and at the same time ensuring that these blokes are taken care of, is an uphill task. I am often at my wit’s end trying to balance these factors. Stopping attrition sure is impossible, but we can try to reduce its occurrence to the maximum possible extent.

There are questions in our mind as to why people leave. There could be various reasons including inadequate pay, sad work environments, bad bosses, no growth prospects, insufficient work, or overwork. Although money is not the sole criterion for people to change jobs, it has to be realized that whenever people leave, it does impact the work environment. Separation is a big loss for the IT group and the organization. The time taken to identify a replacement to join, understand the organization, get trained and be effective, causes a loss in work during this period.

When faced with this problem, I had to take several steps which worked in some measure. Let me share the details of these efforts with you.

1. Standing of the IT department: Ensure that IT occupies a pride of place in the organization. The function should report to the CEO rather than to the CFO or commercial head. Staff feel reassured that they are important to the organization.

2. Participative management: Create a core group of seniors in the IT department to discuss and come up with ideas to effectively run the department. This gives them a sense of ownership, and they retain interest in work.

3. Maintain personal rapport with each member and take care of their career aspirations: It is important to treat each member differently, and be conscious of his competence and ambitions. We need to counsel them to fully apply themselves, and stay motivated. Appropriate work allocation and proper task assignment based on their aptitude and competencies plays a big role in retaining staff.

4. Keep on introducing new technologies: I was once advised by my seniors that it will be a mistake to adopt latest technologies, as people would learn and leave. I ignored their advice and upgraded the technology landscape; the result was a drop in attrition and the fact that we could get good talent from the market. There was one another great experience. As we were on the latest version of SAP and other technologies, some of our staff members who were selected by other organizations, refused to join them as these companies had older software versions. So during such processes of change, people keep themselves busy learning and pay less attention to opportunities outside.

5. User interaction on an equal footing: If not managed properly, users may at times weigh heavily on the IT folks. It is then important for the CIO to intervene and work out a proper work arrangement for collaboration with users. IT staff thus retains their dignity and feels good.

6. Express appreciation and recognize good efforts: It is an excellent idea to appreciate good work and give them an occasional award for outstanding work, or issue letters which go into their personnel files.

I have seen some of these measures work, and been able to retain staff longer than industry norms. So it’s worth experimenting with such initiatives in order make the environment a fun to be place.

Now, if we go by the traditional view, the CIO is a technology wizard who peers at the computer screen and makes various machines work. He is considered a back-end guy, someone who has very little to do directly with the people. But haven’t things changed over the last few years?

Today, IT touches us our everyday lives, and we are very largely dependent on it. Unless the CIO has an idea of the accruable benefits and how IT influences the way we do our work, he would certainly not be of any help. Therefore, the CIO has now come out of his hiding and to do everything that is needed—alongside the people around him.

Let me cite a few examples from my experience. During my stint with a chemical company (way back in 1992), I fought against the prevailing opinion and persuaded the management to sanction the budget required to roll out state-of-the art IT infrastructure throughout the company. With sheer enthusiasm, I went about putting in Windows 3.1, introducing e-mail throughout the company, connecting all offices through the 9.6 kbps STD link, and organizing large scale training to staff on the new platforms. In doing so, I made visits to all locations to ensure functioning of the programme. Within a short period of three months, people were playing around and connecting with people from other offices whom they might have not spoken with for years.

Unwittingly, I had played the role of binding people and getting them interested in work. With a modern IT infrastructure in place, the factory (which was in a remote location) started to attract Graduate Engineering Trainees (GETs). People gave me the informal title of ‘the real HR head’, and this was a pleasant surprise.

Yet another example I can use comes from my tenure with an automobile company. I worked hard to get the systems right in this organization – not one of the pleasantest of things. I met with resistance, but somehow managed to put in improved systems across various areas, which covered work flow, ERP systems and process automation through bar codes. To make systems more effective, I worked with users to bring about process improvements. The results were amazing; apart from financial benefits, there was a transformation in the work load on people and reduction in stress levels. Cessation of overtime and late sitting came as a boon to people. Realizing the popularity of the IT department with the masses, the HR department started to use us for rolling out some of their initiatives in the organization—with the HR head frankly admitting that IT had more credibility.

I am sure that many of our friends would have similar experiences to narrate. In my opinion, today’s CIO has come of age. While doing so, he brings about changes that bring in positive changes to the environment. These above examples just emphasize the fact that a CIO is more human than some may think, and can really be of more value to the organization.