Staffing tactics

Find out about some of the newest weapons companies are deploying in the battle for IT talent.

By Heather Harreld
Network World, 10/23/00

When 25 Bose employees logged extra hours working on a recent September weekend for a router upgrade, they were treated to a company-sponsored luncheon and $50 or $100 gift certificates as thanks for their efforts.

Providing this type of award and recognition for its employees is part of an ongoing recruiting and retention effort at the Framingham, Mass., stereo equipment maker, which also provides gift bags, flexible working hours, a career development program, service awards and company-sponsored training. These soft benefits, coupled with a casual dress code, are becoming commonplace amid brutal competition to hire and keep employees.

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Members of Bose's 100-member IT staff are routinely solicited by other corporations, says Robert Ramrath, director of corporate IS at Bose. "We don't treat retention and recruiting as a project," he says. "It basically is an ongoing journey. We've always got to understand and be responsive to the needs of our employees."

Luncheons and gift certificates are only the beginning of the creative benefits companies are devising to recruit and retain employees. Some corporations are offering concierge services, pet insurance, computer and commuter reimbursement, free daily meals, social clubs and company-sponsored vacations in an effort to keep employees happy.

Many of these firms have been stung by the departure of key employees. Nearly one-third of U.S. firms have lost an employee to a dot-com company, according to a survey released in June by Management Recruiters International (MRI), a Cleveland high-tech recruitment firm. And in New England, more than half of the companies surveyed reported losing an employee to a dot-com.

Because so many dot-coms have closed shop in the wake of the stock market slowdown, many employees have been returning to their former brick-and-mortar employers and the financial stability they offer. However, part of the dot-com legacy now being adopted by more traditional companies is the relaxed work environment and soft benefits routinely offered by Internet start-ups. Of the employees facing layoffs from the dot-coms, the people who were lured away by stock options are returning to companies with more attractive balance sheets, says Neil Fox, vice president and chief information officer of MRI. But many of those who left traditional companies for the Internet start-up culture are moving to other dot-coms, he says.

"Corporations are trying to show they can put the bricks and the clicks together [by saying] 'We have the stability, but we also have the dot-com attitude,'" he says. "It's not a one-size-fits-all world out there. People want to balance their work with their lifestyle. People . . . don't want to fit into the standard mold of corporate culture."

Compensation packages are leveling out in the market, and many candidates are choosing one job over another based on this work/lifestyle balance, he says. Companies are offering to open new satellite offices so employees won't have to move to join the company. These efforts are meant to nurture employees, rather than exploit them, he says.

Sheila Greco, president of high-tech recruiter Sheila Greco Associates in Amsterdam, N.Y., says traditional brick-and-mortar companies are increasingly performing compensation surveys to ensure their IT employees are paid at market value, and then they are getting creative with their soft-benefit offerings.

"They're offering six weeks vacation," she says. "People would rather have a week off then make $5,000 more. They're saying, 'We'll wash your car, we'll pick up your dry cleaning.' If you're child's sick, stay home, we're not going to worry about it as much. They're being more lenient."

At Relativity Technologies, a software vendor in Cary, N.C., employees average a 50- to 55-hour work week, but they can work whenever they want. When they are in the office, they are treated to company-sponsored lunches once or twice a week and a never-ending supply of candy and soda.

"We do ice cream parties at least every other week," says Vivek Wadhwa, Relativity's founder and CEO. "The competition in the market is not over salary. The competition becomes the quality of the work, the excitement, the fun of being here. We just try to have a very friendly work environment."

Beverly Kaye, president of Career Systems International in Scranton, Pa., and author of Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay, says employees are looking for recognition, appreciation, the chance to learn and grow, and the opportunity to make a contribution by doing meaningful work. There are noncash-related steps that managers can take to stem the talent drain, she says.

"They involve the managers stopping to learn more about individual people ... and how to keep them," she says. "The basic question the manager has to ask is . . . 'What can I do to keep you?' People will tell you what they need. When they name things that are out of your control, keep that list going.'"

While soft benefits may be the newest trend in the battle for brainpower in the new economy, some companies are still finding that the lure of bleeding-edge technology may be the greatest benefit.

Chip DiComo, network manager at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics in Miami, says his company's flexible work schedule policy and generous vacation time meet his lifestyle requirements. But it's the uniqueness of the firm's network - more than 95% VPN - that helps his recruiting and retention efforts.

"If we were plain old corporate America, we'd have some serious problems recruiting," he says. "The bottom line is people want to be challenged. They want to enjoy what they do. The thing that saves us is we've got a corporate network that you can't find anywhere else. It's all cutting-edge stuff . . . stuff that hasn't been tried before."