With the rapid pace of technology introduction, CIOs and IT management must acquire the latest and most in-demand human talent to keep up. Unfortunately, the number of people who possess the latest skills doesn’t match the demand, which is increased even more by the IT vendors and system integrators that are also bidding for this scarce resource. The resulting shortage increases the salary and benefit levels of the available talent.
Those responsible for staffing IT organizations face two difficulties: finding the people with the needed skills and fitting those people within the existing salary structure. Today we will talk about that second difficulty when you have caught the interest of a highly sought-after person with the latest skills only to find that their salary demands are too high. Your existing IT staff is well compensated, but this new hire threatens to blow up your compensation standards. Not only would you need to pay much more in salary and benefits for the new hire, but their presence in your payroll would also have a domino effect, pushing compensation up for the entire IT staff.
And that’s a reality that you can’t ignore. Don’t fool yourself that your staff will remain blissfully ignorant of the discrepancy. When they inevitably learn the truth, they are going to feel taken advantage of. Some will leave, and those who stay are likely to become disenchanted, maybe to the point of quietly quitting: staying on the payroll while doing no real work. You can tweak things, as suggested in a blog from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), by doing things such as giving the new hire a sign-on bonus instead of a significantly higher base salary or giving current staff off-cycle raises, but any alternative is going to raise costs and possibly skew the compensation schedule.
The better option is to contract the coveted talent from a third-party service provider. Forward-looking IT managers have found that this approach offers several benefits:
- Existing staff can’t make direct comparisons because the contract doesn’t include benefits.
- Contracts are for a finite period, and most of the IT team will understand that the highly paid contractor joining their ranks brings specific skills and has been engaged for a limited project.
- Contractors don’t have to fit within HR’s pre-determined salary levels, and their higher compensation will have no permanent effect.
- IT managers can leverage the existing relationships and contacts these third parties already have with these in-demand professionals.
Maverick Technology Partners specializes in providing contractors with important and specialized skills with complementary services. It can help IT management find and utilize proven professionals who have the latest and most important IT skill sets. These individuals are available for both short- and long-term projects.
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