3 Ways to Setup Your IT Department for Success
It can be argued that the IT landscape changes faster than any other segment of the business today. Innovations and advancements occur at a lightening pace, and IT leaders have to keep one eye on the present, and one eye on the future. There is no crystal ball to look into and determine exactly what lies on the horizon, be it next month or several years from now. However, there are steps that leaders can take today to prepare their IT teams for the future.
- Redefine IT Success
How does your IT department measure success today? If it’s like most, it uses metrics from the helpdesk to determine how things are going. Many teams live and die by KPIs like first-call resolution, escalations, and closed tickets. Moving forward, success will be measured by something very different: user satisfaction. Organizations are starting to realize that first-call resolutions mean nothing if the user is completely dissatisfied with his or her experience. If the user is an external customer, it will impact sales and profits. If the user is internal, it impacts morale, engagement, and productivity.
The IT department of the future will be focused on accountability and will solicit and receive feedback on a regular basis directly from users. This means that teams must not only have the technical chops to succeed, but they must also understand how their work impacts the organization and should possess more “people skills” than were required of IT professionals in the past.
- Stepping Out of the IT Bubble
Today’s tech teams are used to collaborating on projects with their internal team members and with external departments. However, some jobs have remained relatively insulated. Developers, for example, have seldom been forced to think about the way their work impacts other departments or the organization as a whole. The future will look much different and every contributor of a project will have to learn the fine art of collaborating with tech people and with non-tech people alike. There will be no jobs that allow employees to hide behind the curtain and work through their task list. Everyone will be expected to step up and participate in a project from end to end, and will be expected to understand how their jobs impact the organization as a whole.
- Gearing Up for Generation Z
There is little doubt that millennials have changed the workforce. They were the first generation to grow up with true wireless technology at their fingertips, and the demands they have made in the workplace sent ill-prepared IT departments scrambling (the great BYOD debate, for example) to keep up as young workers continue to demolish long-standing corporate technology norms and rules.
As Generation Z gears up to graduate from college and enter the workforce, their demands on and for technology will continue to evolve. Companies that have resisted the changes imposed by millennials will find themselves lagging behind the competition. Leaders would serve their company and its employees well by embracing change and ramping up their security and cloud teams to ready the company for the next generation.
If you are thinking about getting your IT department prepared for the future, it’s time to reach out to the award-winning team at Talon. Contact us today to learn the ways in which we can help you achieve your talent acquisition and retention goals for your tech team. Call us at 609-924-8900 or fill out our online form below to start the conversation.
