The Manage IT Newsletter - Earning Total Commitment:

This issue focuses on how you can earn high levels of commitment from your IT worker's.

Welcome to the October 2005 issue of the "Manage IT Newsletter."

In this issue we will focus on how you can obtain high-levels of commitment and energy from your team members. Did you know that according to a recent study, less than one tenth of the IT workforce is fully committed to their jobs? Did you also know that offering top salaries, benefits and other forms of compensation while important is not enough to get you to high levels of employee commitment? I invite you to read this months article titled Earning Total Commitment to find out what you can and should do to get top employee engagement.

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With warmest regards,

Joe Santana,
Co-author Manage IT
http://www.manageitbook.com ***************************In this Issue ****************************
Focus Topic - Earning Total Commitment
More resources for your career and business
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--------------------------- Focus Topic -----------------------------
Earning Total Commitment

Today professional magazines abound with stories regarding the lack of commitment and loyalty in employees. This is often referred to as employee disengagement. Engagement, which is the opposite of disengagement, is defined as a condition of full-strength, enthusiastic dedication to work in which your employee is passionately connected to her or his job. These committed or engaged employees are indeed very important to your team's success. According to studies, committed staffers are not only highly productive they are also very likely to stick around.

Unfortunately, according to a recent Herman Trend Alert, employee commitment is on the decline. Whereas 22% of employees reported being highly passionate about their jobs at a level that would be considered engaged or fully committed in 2002, the aforementioned Herman Trend Alert tells us that the latest report has dropped this figure to 17%. Furthermore, in a recent survey I took through my network of global and US based IT professionals, only 9% of the respondents indicated the high-level of satisfaction associated with high-levels of commitment. (This is not too surprising considering all of the data that shows how low morale has dropped in the battered IT job market).

Considering the pressure you're under today to produce more in terms of quantity and quality of services in your ITO, anything short of full team member commitment presents a big problem. So what can you do to move towards higher levels of employee commitment? Do you need to offer bigger salaries and better perks than your competitors?

Interesting enough, expert studies show that the presence of competitive salary, training and good company benefits although important is not enough. These aforementioned items, which we can collectively call "hygiene-factors" will not through their mere existence drive intense commitment, although being stingy in these will clearly hurt your morale building efforts. According to expert studies in addition to taking adequate care of these "hygiene-factors," you need to do more to earn high-levels of commitment. Specific areas where you need to be effective in order to attain exceptional levels of commitment include the following:

1. Honesty when interviewing. Providing a job and workplace environment that is exactly what the employee expected when she or he was interviewed is very important. Did you know that 40% of turnover happens in the first six months, and that the primary cause is that the job was not what the employee expected when they were hired? Clearly truth in advertising during the interview process can save both parties a lot of time and prevent wasted efforts. Through honesty make sure you attract and bring in people who can be engaged in your environment.

2. Treating your team members like job candidates. Experience and studies show that having a never-ending process of recruiting that does not stop after the person becomes your employee is important to maintaining a committed relationship. In effect this is the equivalent of keeping a marriage healthy through a continuous courtship process that persists long past the "I dos."

3. Engaging your team member's best talents and their passions. Enabling your team members to make the best use of their natural passions and talents in doing their jobs is another extremely important factor in gaining commitment. Unfortunately, what some managers do is akin to hiring a chicken, telling them that the goal is to get to the top branch of a tree, pointing to a squirrel as the exemplar employee and asking the chicken to climb to the top like the "star" squirrel. A better way, is to tell the chicken the goal is to get to the top branch and let the chicken get there through a way that is more aligned with its natural abilities, (namely flying and hopping). Be flexible in how work gets done and gain more commitment by encouraging the expression of natural talents and passions.

4. Providing adequate amounts of feedback to your team members. According to the respondents to my survey, most managers are stingy with this low-cost, high-value management tool. People want to know where they stand, "where-they-are-doing-well" as well as where they need improvement.

5. Providing coaching that is deemed of value by employees in their personal and career development. Again, another area that appears to be often neglected. Learning coaching techniques that will enable you to unleash the best performance and commitment from your team is actually within the reach of any manager.

6. Becoming the co-architect of your team members careers by offering them growth and advancement opportunities. It may surprise you to know that many managers working in companies with short to non-existent internal career options have found creative ways to offer energizing opportunities that enable them to reap top commitment from their staff.

7. Letting you employees know that they are highly valued and recognizing their accomplishments. This is yet another low-cost, high yield opportunity for driving commitment.

8. Providing an environment where workloads are balanced through effective management and prioritization in a manner that enables team members to enjoy both job success as well as a personal life. This balance of course will vary from person to person. For some people a 55-plus workweek is no problem and even enjoyable. For others, however, it is an intolerable burden, especially if most of it is the result of poor workload planning and prioritization on the part of the manager.

9. Finally always behaving in a manner that engenders trust and confidence. As a manager, you are and should be a persuader and influencer of behavior and that's fine so long as your influence and persuasions result in a win for you, your company AND the employee. If you use your influence to produce wins for you and/or your company at the expense of your team members, you have become an untrustworthy manipulator. Simply put, tell people the truth, avoid lies of omission and any other tactics that result in the misleading people in way that causes them to make decisions or take actions unknowingly against their best interest.

So what is the big message here? Basically it all boils down to this: In order to earn high levels of commitment you need make sure you take care of the "hygiene stuff" and on top of this engage in practices that demonstrably show you really care about your people. Do this and you will truly earn and deserve total commitment.

By the way, if you are looking for some specific ways that you can put this approach to gaining top-level commitment into practice in your environment, you may be interested in my upcoming book titled "101 Ways to Gain Commitment." If you are interested in learning more about this topic or the upcoming book, feel free to send me an email at joe@joesantana.com

My best wishes toward your continued success!
JS

P.S. See below for more resources on this and other IT professional and management topics.

------------ Resources for your career and business -------------

NEED A SEMINAR LEADER FOR YOUR NEXT LIVE OR WEB EVENT BASED SEMINAR, EXECUTIVE BREIFING OR FORUM EVENT?
Contact me either via email at joe@joesantana.com or call me at 347.228.8978. Please note that I accept only a very few speaking engagements due to my schedule, so if you are interested contact me way in advance of your event (3-months minimum).

WANT TO KNOW WHAT OTHER IT PROS AROUND THE WORLD THINK?
Join my virtual IT professional World Wide network at http://itpww1-network.ryze.com (Membership is free). Contact me to determine if you qualify for membership.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE WEEKLY UPDATES ON TRENDS AND EVENTS THAT IMPACT YOUR IT CAREER & PRACTICES?
Visit my blog hosted by ITToolbox.com. This, weekly news site updated two to three times per week, contains rapid insights into the news that affects the careers and jobs of IT professionals. To access visit http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/strategies

I hope you enjoyed this issue of the IT Managers Newsletter and as always I look forward to continuing to serve you.