IT managers need to be more honest with staff

IT workers demotivated by bad staff management

Many IT and telecoms workers remain in the dark about their employers business goals, according to new research conducted by YouGov, a situation that has a negative effect on their motivation, productivity and innovation.

David McLeod is advisor to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and author of the government report ‘Engaging for Success’. The report’s central premise is obvious – that poor employee management deters staff from fulfilling their potential, and that can have a damaging effect on the business.

Only one in four IT and telecoms employees surveyed by YouGov said their managers had communicated their business objectives for the coming year, with 40 per cent saying they had no idea of the organisation’s strategy for the future.

“This is particularly important in IT where the day to day pressures of developing new systems and maintaining effective knowledge management are so profound that the business sometimes forgets what IT is trying to achieve in the first place,” said McLeod. “And if this is not absolutely clear from the start, the organisation is sowing the seed of serious problems further down the track.”

More useful is concrete advice on how to improve matters, mainly through straight talking, honesty, garnering employees’ ideas on how to improve the business, then acting on them.

“People need to understand where the organisation has been, where it is going and why – be brutally honest about whether it is going through a difficult time, whether there are green shoots, or whether orders are filling up nicely,” said McLeod. “And managers need to be able to engage staff and bring out the best in them. Give people feedback and deliver a great sense of being competent day to day people managers.”

The report also says it is important to make staff feel as though they have a valid input into the future direction of the company, and to hold an open door policy for innovative ideas around new products or improvements to existing processes or services.

“If managers then don’t act on those [ideas], because they are doing things cheaper or whatever, they need to say why,” said McLeod.