• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in all computer occupations is expected to increase by 22% in the next decade. It’s recommended that such forecasts be taken with a grain of salt because they can’t account for market changes and technology disruptions. But when it comes to the possibility of more jobs, we’ll take it with whatever seasoning necessary.
• Books, magazines, seminars! Advice on tech innovation is everywhere, and it can be an awful lot to swallow. Here is some innovation food for thought in seven easily digestible bites.
• Some straightforward advice on writing a social media policy for your company that somehow manages to include Quatrain LI of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. That aspect alone makes it worth the read, wethinks.
• Finding it harder and harder to find common cause with your younger workers? Well, you both more or less have Trivial Pursuit editions named for you — see!? OK, maybe that’s not enough to get baby boomers and Millennials in your IT organization to get along, but these tips on fostering intergenerational harmony might help. Besides, as our friend Goethe reminds: “Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
• And finally, why used-car shoppers should lean toward orange vehicles and other odd insights — brought to you by big data.

I ask because I just read the Dice Report for February, which shows that corporate HR and technology leaders are clearly out of sync when it comes to IT staff motivation.

When asked about the biggest blockade to motivating their IT staff, the No. 1 answer from HR was, “None, our technology team is motivated.”

Tech leaders polled in the same survey said salary freezes and smaller raises were the biggest impediments to IT staff motivation.

I’m not hearing much about pay raises yet from IT folks. In fact, our IT salary and career survey for 2009 showed that salaries decreased from 2008 to 2009, but 458 of the 952 IT executives and managers we surveyed do expect a pay raise of about 4.7% this year.

Where does this leave CIOs? If companies aren’t acknowledging pay raises as a key motivator, what else can they do to raise the mood in their IT departments?

Training and defining a career path for your IT staff come to mind. Your IT staff needs to keep pace with an ever-changing landscape; and the cost of training could be justified as not only a motivational tool, but ultimately as a revenue generator for the business.

In the same vein, our CIO columnist Niel Nickolaisen points to the importance of providing IT staff with meaningful work when salary increases are not an option.

So, if salary increases and possibly training are out of the budget for now, what are you doing to motivate your staff? Let me know at ctorode@techtarget.com