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Practice Area: Professions and Retention Services

Professions programs are key to IT worker retention and linking human capital expenditures to business strategy. Foote Partners helps you build them.

Smart employers are developing and executing robust internally branded employment strategies for attracting and growing IT talent. Even more important, they’re using these strategies for retaining IT professionals at a critical time in the history of the IT profession.

These strategies typically marry total compensation, professional development, performance management, work/life balance, non-monetary and recognition elements into an overall retention program tuned to corporate culture, organizational goals and performance philosophies. Professions programs are direct connections between business strategy and human capital management.

A recent study by Foote Partners involving 164 North American and European employers discovered that employers are implementing new-generation professions and retention programs for their extraordinary effectiveness in delivering:

	Long-term retention solutions
	Cost-effective, high-value professional development
	Staffing strategies tightly linked to business needs
	Decision models for labor strategies: outsourcing, offshoring, hiring

Profession/retention programs: The great recruiter neutralizer. These programs are particularly effective at neutralizing the influence that a good executive recruiter can have in convincing talented IT professionals to considering looking elsewhere. Well-run professions programs help lock in those who are ambitious about their career direction and professional development -- exactly the kind of workers that recruiters target most.

What are Professions Programs?

Professions programs reorganize thinking about tech worker employment, emphasizing broad, horizontal IT roles instead of job titles. Professions examples: Consulting, Architecture, Project Management, Client/Engagement Management, and various IT Specialists (software engineering, solutions architects, security, service management, Linux, Microsoft, storage technology and many more). Career models and paths can then be more logically defined, and global standards defined for attaining skill proficiency in technical, business, and 'soft' skills necessary to moving workers through promotion paths. Professions map out how workers can logically jump career paths instead of simply climbing up the ladder in their current path---a big deal given how IT careers are currently migrating.

Professions programs can be as simple as well-organized communities of interest (sometimes called communities of professions) to promote cross-learning for IT professionals seeking to manage their careers and enhance their value to their employers. At their most robust, professions programs integrate career models / paths, learning programs, knowledge management, performance management systems, and compensation, with business strategies, customers, and market development. They typically outline structured internal certifications processes and lots of tools and methods aimed at hiring and developing IT talent to match business needs.

For employers who are continually faced with decisions to outsource, offshore, or hire/retain the IT talent required to execute business plans, professions/retention programs are guide decisions. For IT workers who wish to accelerate their "promotibility" in a single career track or jump to another job or career path apart from where they now are, these programs are mandatory.

How Foote Partners helps you build Professions and Retention Programs

Foote Partners' combines a variety of well-tested proprietary tools and methodologies with a team of consultants, researchers, and analysts experienced in profession and retention program development and execution.

Assessment: We begin by putting you through a few exercises to assess capabilities and risks. You'll see how you stack up against other employers who have developed successful professions and retention programs, and we'll examine elements of each already in place that can contribute to an overall professions and retention environment.

Part 1 - Profession and Retention Programs Risk Evaluator: A self-assessment tool that takes 15 minutes to complete. We use the results to compare you against success factors from employers who have already developed solid professions and retention programs. You may stop here or progress to Part 2.

Exactly how at-risk is your company for stepping on 'employment landmines' that can cause the loss of key IT employees to other companies? Our Profession Programs Risk Assessor is a quick and efficient tool you can use for measuring your company's preparedness and capabilities against key best/better practices at more than one hundred companies who have developed these programs. Click on the link above for a free Assessor.

Part 2 - Foote Partners Assessment: We'll go deeper, with internal interviews and information collection sufficient to establish the groundwork for the project management, stakeholder management, human resources, communications, organizational transition management, and program elements of proposed profession and retention programs.

Briefings: Profession and retention programs are as varied as corporate cultures and organizational models. There are countless options available for addressing a variety of PP- and retention related missions and objectives, and for adapting to time exigencies, spans of influence, IT/business alignment, career path models, IT roles, budgets, and customers. In this phase you'll learned what's possible and help narrow down your program goals and objectives.

Plan development and strategy: We work closely with you to develop a realistic strategy and a detailed execution plan that specifies all program components and timeline, but most importantly a strategy and tactics for gaining executive, management, and organizational support for the changes necessary to blend profession and retention programs into the corporate environment. We use as our guide the examples of such programs that have been successfully implemented at other companies, including some or all of the

--Compensation and total rewards
--Career models/paths
--Enterprise project management
--Knowledge management
--Learning organizations
--Staffing strategies
--Performance management
--Internal communications
--Human resource management

Execution: Most Professions Program implementations derail in this phase: employers cannot secure and maintain the stakeholder support required, or they've underestimated the rigor necessary to manage organizational change and transition strategies. Foote Partners will recommend the best approach based on the rigorous assessments and evaluations conducted in earlier stages, and offer the services of a senior team of seasoned professionals experienced in transition and organizational management. Moreover, we will augment your team Foote Partners stable of former corporate executives and consultants skilled in program development and execution in the following disciplines:

--Compensation and total rewards (professional, executive)
--Career models/paths
--Enterprise project management
--Knowledge management
--Learning organizations
--Staffing strategies
--Performance management
--Internal communications
--Human resource management

Supporting Consulting and Advisory Practices

The Professions and Retention Services practice is further supported by four Foote Partners consulting practices that have for nearly a decade assisted a variety of clients in their IT workforce management solutions.

IT Human Capital Management

Our Human Capital Management practice will assist you in building an IT agenda that leverages new technology, proven management processes, and strategies for human capital management of full-time employees, contractors, consultants, and outsourced/offshored personnel. Our team of management consultants, IT industry analysts, and former human resources professionals have unique qualification to help you in many key HCM areas including:

--Transition to new IT career paths and IT/business job rotation models
--Due diligence for offshoring/outsourcing labor balancing decisions
--Auditing organizational readiness and identifying exposures
--Setting realistic IT/HR priorities, goals, and organizational requirements
--Building HR, IT, and business alliances
--Employing powerful transition skills and building strong project teams

IT Compensation Services

Our IT Compensation Survey Research series—unmatched in the compensation survey industry for its innovation—has been featured in BusinessWeek, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and dozens of IT and HR industry publications worldwide, National Public Radio, CNN, and global Webcasts. More than 1,400 employers have purchased Foote Partners compensation surveys to benchmark their IT workers and solve their most difficult information technology workforce problems.

Organizational and Transition Management

Foote Partners offers a wide array of methodologies, tools, and processes aimed at reducing the risks and managing performance associated with business changes. Our Organizational and Transition Management practice is staffed with a group of senior consultants and specialists experienced in business, IT, operations, HR, and technology environments, and in internal IT/business partnerships and organizational issues associated with outsourcing/offshoring, mergers, acquisitions, and professions programs.

Performance Management

Our Performance Management practice targets institutional performance issues associated with a wide range of IT and business segments. We are particularly experienced in internal IT/business partnerships and organizational issues associated with outsourcing/offshoring, IT service delivery (ITIL, CMM, SixSigma), and a range of initiatives where organizational metrics are critical to the smooth operations.

Enterprise Project Delivery

Developing Enterprise Project Delivery (EPD) capabilities is key to achieving success in Professions Programs as well as CRM, DW/BI, ERP, SFA, and other key initiatives. Our Enterprise Project Delivery practice brings a wide array of capabilities to companies in need of cross-functional management and advanced enterprise team development.