To start with, IT talent leaving your business is expensive.  Filling IT jobs is expensive. Employee Recognition plays a crucial role in retaining your talent. It no surprise that the average employee that exits the company costs around 33% of their annual salary. This takes into consideration the time and effort needed to find, onboard, train new hires. Having an Employee Recognition plan has proven time and time again to be a winning formula.

In addition to making it a challenge to keep other valuable employees, employee turnover expenses can have a major negative influence on a company’s success. Retention and turnover are cited by just under 50% of HR experts as the top talent acquisition management challenges, and around 80% of CEOs or company owners have chosen to focus their investment efforts on personnel.

Reward systems are the mot impactful ways to impact Employee retention within the IT jobs sector.

While researching for this blog, I noticed that offering staff incentives has proven to be a successful strategy for attracting and keeping new IT talent. This is especially true for the younger workforce, which includes the age groups as wide as from the age of 21 to 49, who view incentives as an essential part of their employee compensation. In Fact, some would simply refuse to join or leave easily for the basics. Receiving a reward from your workplace will enhance your loyalty to the business hugely.

Here are our top 5 employee incentives for IT talent (or any talent):

  1. Over 25 days annual leave
  2. Transport cards fully paid
  3. Full insurance packages (Health, Dental, life etc)
  4. Free eLearning programs
  5. Fast food catering on specific days (ie Fun Fridays)

These conclusions are supported by independent research that demonstrates how providing incentives and rewards to employees can lower turnover and improve a company’s bottom line:

So how might a reward system help you keep your IT talent?

Let’s concentrate on the methods you can plan and run your employee recognition process to provide your company a competitive edge now that we’ve established the direct link between incentive systems and staff retention.

The first thing to keep in mind is that every person is unique.

There is no one prize that fits all situations, and it is hard to please everyone all of the time. But if you keep in mind crucial elements like employee feedback, employee demographics, and your company’s goals, you should be able to retain the support of the majority of your team.

Here are out top 4 tips to consider:

  1. Give the guys a choice of reward. For example, research has shown that people prefer individual incentives, so look at options like holidays, smart TV, new phones etc.
  2. Reward regularly, employees may become disinterested in working toward long-term gains if the process is stretched out and difficult. It is preferable to reward your staff on a consistent basis with modest but frequent prizes (Its doesn’t always have to be a holiday). This not only increases employee engagement but also serves as a constant reminder to staff members of the desired behaviours and actions that your business chooses to reward.
  3. Make the rewards personal. I have seen business give very specific rewards to people matching their interests, for example if someone likes skiing, they are offered something in that area. This really shows the employee that that are listened to, respected and acknowledged.
  4. Make the rewards memorable. You want the employee to simply remember, have them talk about the incentive. The science behind that is the employee engages multiple senses. For example, if the incentive is presented ceremoniously tends to get the most impact. People congratulate them on there achievement etc.

How do these reward systems benefit the IT benefit and what impact have they on performance?

Within the IT jobs market in Ireland, the average tenure for an IT worker is just short of 3 years.  It takes an employee typically 3 months to ramp up depending on what they will be working n, it can be as much as 12 months. So, its critically important that you keep your IT talent engaged. These reward systems can provide the below:

Job Satisfaction – Rewards and recognition helps employees simply feel valued.

Motivational boost – it has been proved that gifts and rewards push employees to re-achieve but also those surrounding the rewarded employee to be motivated to also achieve. It brings people together and bring more mentorship to their roles

Engagement – The more recognition the more the employee feels they are doing a good job and want to continue to perform for further recognition. They will feel that promotions are possible and give a sense of ownership of the tasks they are mastering.

Team culture is an important part of employee wellness, I have added a few tips in this blog with regards Culture.

It has been proven time and time again in numerous research that rewards albeit have a cost but pay back in dividends time and time again. If this area ignored for taken for granted it does normally follow attrition issues for the business.

Elwood Roberts is a specialist Recruitment business catering to the IT jobs market in Ireland and the US. If you are considering hiring and need some assistance, please do get in touch. You can also click here for a little more about our services.