Brunel University's Business Class: How to put people first

This week Professor Robert Macredie and Dr Mark Lycett ask why, when every boss invariably says that they put staff first, few companies really make the right moves...

A recent survey here at Brunel revealed the lack of strategic thought invested in the IT department’s most valuable asset, its people. According to the results, less than a quarter of respondents are staffing IT projects according to experience. Instead, teams are more often decided on resource and cost. This is understandable – it’s a project manager’s job to balance availability and experience against cost, finding the best ‘fit’ for a job. However, the downside of this is that it’s a short-term solution, providing little opportunity to build a suitably skilled workforce. It’s worth investigating how we approach staffing project management so that those responsible for building project teams can make the call between short- and long-term benefits – in economic terms, the difference between 'cheap' and 'good value'.

The first point to be investigated is how we view our workforce. The very word ‘human resources’, while coined in an attempt to make people feel valued, betrays the real story. A resource is exploited, used and exhausted before an alternative is sought. Once depleted, it has no further value. Many organisations – unwittingly or not – view their human capital in this way, buying, using and selling skills rather than nurturing, developing or growing them.

If the workforce is purely a resource, then the current market situation should be a dream ticket for most IT departments. With the IT labour market still at a low ebb there should be lots of good value, high quality staff available for hire. Yet, if that’s true, why aren’t IT projects finishing on time, on budget, with added functionality?

The reality is different – creating systems is much more complex than simply gathering the best people in one room. It’s about matching skills together to build a team that can produce excellent systems.

If asked about their approach to staff management, few companies would readily admit to seeing their own reflection in the ‘market place’ description above, yet it’s a reality in many IT departments. What kind of IT department do you have? Is it a ‘free market’, a trading zone for skills, or a ‘college’ where ability is nurtured? We’d be happy to bet that right now, most have the former: a variety of gifted individuals, all thinking for themselves, by themselves.

Another result of this short-term approach is to create a ‘disposable’ IT department consisting of a shifting group of experts, who move frequently from job to job, trading experience just like a commodity. The alternative learning environment is more likely to create a team of workers who have an allegiance to their company and their team, and who develop and share skills as they move from project to project.

Most IT directors know well that the former is unlikely to produce the most productive workforce. And we are all well aware of the benefits of the latter – in a happy, motivated team working together, the sum of the whole is greater than the parts. Put simply, a good team is more likely to build better systems, quicker.

As so often the theory sounds like common sense but putting it into practice is often very different. With tight budgets and time constraints, it’s possible to feel that there’s seldom a real choice when making decisions. Many fully understand the competitive advantage to be gained from a longer-term look at project staffing but there are clearly economic disadvantages. In reality, the ideal is neither the market nor the college but somewhere in between.

Training has an important role to play in this, yet training budgets are often misdirected. Once again, reaching a short-term solution can take precedence over developing longer-term skills. This is where project managers should have an element of control, with training budgets linked to programme rather than project budgets – where programmes represent wider, more persistent development directions for organisations.

Alternatively, training budgets could be allocated to individuals, with ‘learning accounts’ just like the Tory’s suggestion of having individual health passports. The key to success here would be to avoid bureaucracy at all costs – and to find ways to hold on to the employees that are developed within the system.

However, the best training is often on the job. To get the most out of projects, all those involved should think about development constantly, seeing each project as a way of developing skills, not just ‘getting the work done’. It’s up to IT managers and directors to foster that kind of learning environment.

This kind of wider view of job fulfilment is really the key to developing strong, high performing teams. Commoditising skills so that they can be easily traded is all very well but money alone does not guarantee expertise. The annual bonus time doesn’t necessarily create better systems or better functioning teams, it just increases individual wealth (and an interesting observation is that, despite so doing, it often makes those who are rewarded unhappy). Why not extend that investment to invest in something that could really help?