One way to stem the turnover tide is to provide training and development for your IT staff. While compensation is the hot button for most IT professionals, many also consider professional development and career enhancement the top issues in their decisions to stay or go. This is particularly true for networking technicians, including the helpdesk, where turnover is the greatest. Even with some slowdown in network equipment purchases, the demand for talent remains high.
Training is often the integral component in an effective retention strategy.
That depends, according to recent Meta Group research. For the most part, large companies with more than 1,000 IT employees have been the most aggressive in pursuing training. These companies are getting past the old fear that training your employees just gives them more expertise to take with them out the door. The average training period per year also has doubled, to eight days. But it's still underused overall in most organizations.