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Data from recent employee engagement surveys shows IT professionals among the unhappiest and least-satisfied segments of the corporate workforce. It’s time for CIOs to address dwindling IT morale.

Are the IT professionals in your organization happy with and engaged in their work?

It’s quite possible they are, but judging by data from TINYpulse, an employee engagement survey company, it looks like many CIOs may have a significant workforce discontentment problem on their hands.

This spring, TINYpulse analyzed responses to engagement surveys from 2,200 employees working in various functions, including IT, at small, midsize, and large companies in the U.S. TINYpulse found the majority of survey respondents from IT to be largely dissatisfied with various aspects of their jobs.

For example, when asked to rate their happiness at work on a scale of one to 10, where one represents miserable and 10 represents delighted, only 19 percent of IT professionals rated their happiness a nine or a 10; the vast majority ranked somewhere between miserable to middling. Overall, respondents from IT were around 14 percent less happy with their work situation than employees from other functions.

IT professionals’ unhappiness at work may stem from a perceived lack of growth and development opportunities with their current employers, according to TINYpulse’s data. Only 36 percent of IT professionals surveyed say they have a clear career path, compared with 50 percent of respondents from other functions. Moreover, IT professionals, by and large, don’t feel their organizations support their professional interests or career goals. Just over a quarter (26 percent) rated their organization’s support highly (a nine or a 10) compared with 40 percent of survey respondents in other functions.

TINYpulse’s data confirms much of what I’ve seen in the marketplace, and it should send a resounding message to CIOs. In the countless conversations I’ve had with corporate IT professionals in recent years as an HR consultant, many have expressed palpable dissatisfaction, sometimes bordering on cynicism, with their jobs and career outlook.

It may be time to take the pulse of your IT organization. Find out whether the managers and staff executing your business-aligned IT strategies feel engaged, supported, and satisfied. This is not a workforce segment that you or your enterprise can afford to ignore. These are the people on the front lines of cyber security, detecting threats and protecting assets. They’re the link to innovation, developing differentiating technology-based products and services. They comprise your enterprise’s connective tissue, executing business transformation, facilitating mergers and acquisitions, and orchestrating almost the entirety of business operations. They represent a dwindling talent pool, and your enterprise can’t function effectively without them.

Consider some of the potential implications of low IT engagement and satisfaction levels on IT and business operations: sloppy code that leads to security vulnerabilities or system outages, project deadlines that slip, deliberate IT sabotage carried out by disgruntled workers, and costly turnover. If your company experiences a data breach, if a mission-critical system goes down, or a major project deadline is in jeopardy, you want your IT staff jumping into action and you want them to care. You don’t want them secretly cheering your organization’s misfortunes and failures.

So what can you do if, after taking the temperature of your IT organization, you find staff engagement and satisfaction levels are not where you’d like them to be? First and foremost, demand help from HR. Ask them to develop competency models for various roles in your IT organization. Competency models can serve as the basis for determining whether the right people are in the right jobs and for creating specific, targeted training and development programs that meet both the short- and long-term needs of the IT organization, as well as the needs of individual employees.

The TINYpulse data points to another suggestion: improve management. Many IT professionals move into management positions on the basis of their technical skills as opposed to their leadership ability. As a result, when it comes to actually managing employees, they may stumble. Their lack of experience may explain why so many of the surveyed IT professionals feel unsupported in their careers. To reverse that trend, managers in IT need hands-on training on a variety of topics, including how to advocate on behalf of their teams, hold career development discussions with direct reports, and address issues like work-life balance. At an enterprise level, companies should maintain a culture of mobility that allows high-potential employees across functions to move into different roles.

IT employees are generally passionate, highly skilled professionals who wish to grow in their careers and make meaningful contributions to their organizations and to society. So the fact that they express so much dissatisfaction speaks to the extent to which the structure and nature of their work environment—that is, your IT organization—puts a damper on their natural enthusiasm and limits their investment in their work. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

One thing I’ve learned over the years: when people feel inspired, supported, and heard in an organization, they can and will do amazing things. IT, like other professions, deserves this level of respect. Hopefully these insights will help organizations refocus their investments and make sure their IT teams are well taken care of. Committing to building a high-performing IT organization filled with passionate, invested employees can be part of your legacy.

—by Josh Bersin, principal and co-founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP

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