According to Gartner’s 2008 global chief information officer (CIO) survey, IT talent acquisition and retention is the third most important issue for technology leaders.

Why? Because of a shortage of skilled IT staff, caused by several factors.
First, there is a missing generation of new entrants to the industry; post- dot com downturn, the number of students enrolling for IT degree courses plummeted as would-be IT undergraduates realised they were unlikely to become overnight millionaires.

The nuclear winter that followed the euphoria caused cash-strapped technology firms to freeze all staff development. Employers knew the staff had nowhere to flee, as all their rivals faced the same issues.

But probably the biggest concern today is the loss of very experienced IT professionals reaching retirement age.

Too often, human resources (HR) treat IT people in the same way as the firm treats stationery. If you need staplers and pencils you order them; similarly with Oracle database administrators and C# developers.

A commodity mindset leads to the devolved recruitment of low-level operatives. And such an approach sends a message that the organisation does not perceive IT as strategic to success.

Your firm must recognise that IT talent management is less commodity and more neurosurgery.

See how far you get when you try to impose the traditional command and control management structure on your talented staff. Couple this with the new generation of employees who work to their own drumbeat, rather than yours, and the management challenge looks overwhelming.

So what can you do? First, ensure IT talent management is handled at a sufficiently high level. The CIO and HR director need to be actively involved in the process.

Second, your organisation needs to realise that loyalty is a thing of the past. To attract the best talent, offer experiences and skills development with market value. Be under no illusion; IT talent will only stick around if you provide interesting work.

Also ensure users who engage with technologists, such as IT recruiters and learning and development staff, have credibility when discussing IT-related issues. Staffing your IT support services with bluffers is a clear indicator that the organisation has no respect for technology.

In my experience many business leaders do not understand how critical IT is to the success of their business. They pay little attention to their IT functions and prefer to treat technology as a black box managed by the CIO or financial director.

IT staff develop a sense of not being valued when they are treated as if their role is as strategically important as catering services. To avoid an IT talent drain, senior management needs to look after its best-performing technology workers in the same way it does its top sales performers.

Attracting and retaining IT workers requires a root and branch rethink. Simply offering better remuneration and more holidays will not suffice.

Successful talent management requires leaders to be sufficiently tech-savvy and to recognise the strategic importance of IT workers. Possibly job number one is to recruit such business leaders?

Ade McCormack is founder of consultant Auridian and author of The IT Value Stack ­ A boardroom guide to IT Leadership