Despite the recession, there is plenty of evidence world wide that IT skills are still in short supply.
In these recessionary times, some shortsighted organisations are letting extremely skilled and hard to replace IT staff go without I suspect an assessment of whether they will need them in the near future.
For a company in trouble I can understand the rationale to immediately cut costs, for others though, in recessionary times there are real benefits that can be gained from streamlining IT to better serve the business and add more value.
In some specialist areas, letting people go (intangible assets in some cases) may also have more long term effects and potentially affect an organisation’s ability to compete at a later date as these staff turn to other occupations or they gain employment with other companies.
At the same time as a recession we are also in the midst of a global IT skills shortage. As well as making this shortage worse if people leave the industry, when projects are approved or things pick up, the IT personnel will not be there to recruit. This makes this a risky tactic.
The message:
Think carefully about:
- How long you are delaying projects for
- How strategic your IT staff and systems are to your organisation
- Instigating a strategic planning exercise now to confirm which projects will add the most value in these recessionary times.