It’s a buyer’s market. There is a shortage of skilled workers and we all know it. In fact, while the shortage is estimated at a couple of million workers in the U.S. alone, the shortage is increasing rapidly and expected to grow to 14 million by 2020.
Is it any wonder why so many HR professionals are completely and totally obsessed about employee retention? Retention has become such a hot issue for executives that even The Economist dedicated an issue last month (October 2006) to “The search for talent: Why it’s getting harder to find.”
Despite the need and focus on employee retention Spherion Corporation’s IT Employee Confidence Index dropped 4.3 points to 54.1 in the third quarter, according to the latest IT Employment Report (conducted by Harris Interactive). However, some 73% of IT workers say they feel it is not likely to lose their job. So job confidence is not a factor in affecting their job confidence and satisfaction.
“On the surface, this quarter’s data may seem contradictory, but the tech sector itself is operating counter-intuitively,” said Brendan Courtney, senior vice president of Spherion® Professional Services. “IT workers are still being enticed to stay with their current employers through a series of retention efforts which may explain why even more of them are confident in their own job security.”
So employees are not worried about their jobs, but their confidence and job satisfaction is declining – and the market is screaming for skilled workers with a massive shortage that is dramatically on the rise.
What’s the problem?
Read the entire article: The intranet as an employee retention tool