For an organization to build IT bench strength, it is crucial for them to hire the right workforce and identify employees with high management potential. A Gartner report of 2016 says that there is a scarcity of the talent and skills needed to address technology-intensive initiatives. Hence CIOs and IT leaders are under pressure to develop new approaches for acquiring the required capabilities and skills.

Let’s take a look at the key challenges organizations face while building their IT bench strength:

• The inability to properly plan workforce needs has resulted in many IT organizations overusing supplemental staffing like contractors. This has resulted in increased turnover levels and decreased performance levels in the organization.
• Without strong digital capabilities, organizations are unable to respond to the digital opportunities that drive and sustain competitive advantage.

How can your organization assess and build its IT bench strength?

Build a Skill Inventory Process

To effectively tackle the challenges faced by IT organizations while transforming their IT workforce to meet future digital business needs, CIOs and IT leaders must establish a formal skills and competencies inventory process. This inventory process acts as a systematic framework and process for defining current as well as future profiles of roles, technical skills, and business and behavioural competencies required to execute digital business and IT strategies. It allows business leaders to take informed sourcing decisions on the basis of internal and external resources. It also identifies and monitors critical skill areas for risk management and mitigation purposes. This inventory process will help your organization in prioritizing and optimizing training investment to improve the effectiveness of development programs.

Develop a Communication Plan

Whenever implementing a new talent management process, CIOs and HR leaders must get sufficient commitment from employees and managers to ensure that expected outcomes can be achieved. Timely, open and ongoing communications are therefore essential to not only keep everyone informed about the process but also to engage and motivate people to take actions where changes are needed. Thus, company leaders and management should develop a communication plan that demonstrates:

• How the outcomes of the assessment will be used to develop the employees with the right skills and competencies to succeed in digital business.
• What support and assistance are available to employees when needed.
• A plan that outlines and reinforces needs those are to be changed, along with how and why.

Make Data Collection User-Friendly

A key success factor in building the IT bench strength is to create a user-friendly process and provide tools to collect and analyse data that will derive more actionable talent advice and decision support to CIOs and digital business leaders. Skills must be categorized appropriately and in detail. This will help in providing comprehensive information that the organization needs to make decisions while selecting the workforce. Organizations should also include legacy skills, as needed.

To gain the most out of the time and financial investment in conducting an inventory process, organizations are highly recommended to design the program to ensure it is continuously refreshed using a self-service system. By following these three steps, you can build a solid IT bench strength and enhance your digital business.