Voluntary employee turnover is a common and particularly frustrating challenge faced by enterprise IT leaders. Compared to other job functions, the technical skill sets found in IT are highly transferable and are currently in high industry demand, a combination that creates a wealth of outside opportunities for talented IT specialists. Understanding the causes of employee defection will help IT leadership to intelligently address them.
The IT Retention Challenge
Based on estimates from over 1,700 IT decision makers, the Info-Tech 2007-2008 Budget & Staffing survey found that the average IT turnover across all industries will exceed 13% this year – not necessarily high compared to other business areas, but certainly substantial. Considering the time and investment that often goes into onboarding an IT employee into a specific technical role, possibly including extended one-on-one training, this level of turnover reflects a significant annual expense.