IT Staff Management

The IT industry is one of society's many sectors that are always in flux, given its progressive nature. As technological advancements develop swiftly over time, IT professionals are left to struggle to keep up with the pace and efficiently cope with the challenges presented before them--IT staff management being one of them.

For October's CIO Roundtable Feature, Computerworld Philippines invited three IT executives to zero in on how they manage their IT staff, how human resource management has changed over the years, and how they cope with the challenges of handling a highly technical and intrinsically creative IT workforce.

Rene de Guzman, vice president for Information Technology of National Reinsurance Corporation of the Philippines, pointed out the internal struggle with keeping his people occupied even in times of low project inputs for the company. "We are constantly challenged to keep our people motivated, to be passionate in the work that they do because that makes them most productive and creates the best results with their work," he related. "So that's a very big challenge to managers like us."

Aside from keeping his employees motivated for work, Michael Asiddao, head of Information Technology and Operations group of Megalink, also has to keep his staff intact and protect the company from unexpected attrition. "There will always come a point when not everyone in your staff are good technical people who will rise to the challenge," he explained. "But if you just manage their motivation, uplift their creativity and bring out the best in them, they would tend to stay."

Meanwhile, Angel Lito Averia, head of the HR IT Forum, related that IT staff management hasn't really changed over the years; the principles are the same, according to him, and that only the strategies and procedures of managers have changed. "I guess it's pretty much the same if you start talking about concepts about of human behavior and so forth. It's the same thing but it differs on how these concepts are applied," he said, adding that the trick lies in how CIOs and IT managers are able tweak the principles to suit their particular needs, so that they will be able to respond to the particular demands of the market.

Leo Querubin, president of Avante Philippines, served as the moderator for the discussion, with Julius Suarez, sales engineer of security firm Sophos Plc., sitting in to offer insights about the topic.

Excerpts of the roundtable discussion follow:

Computerworld: For your company, what does IT staff management mean and why is it important to the business?

Rene De Guzman: Basically, I think I can define staff management for our group in three parts, but it's not particularly about IT staff alone. Maybe the demand nowadays comes from more than being a skilled IT professional. Especially in an environment like ours, an IT staff member really has to partner with the entire organization.

Communicating clearly the employees' roles and responsibilities is one; another is implementing an effective training and education program so that the expectations of the organization are properly deployed. Third is to constantly challenge the employees to create value to their work. This I believe is how we see staff management in general.

Computerworld:What challenges or issues do you constantly face in managing IT staff and how do you address them?

Rene De Guzman: In my job, shrinking budgets is a constant. But the budget that we probably have now in my organization is the biggest IT budget that we've had in years. So, when I say shrinking budget I actually mean the challenge of creating value in every expense item that you have approved. We challenge each other more. You asked people making requests, "Why do you need this?" When people do not appreciate the real value of the product and the costs, it is necessary to go back to the drawing board and ask, "Why do we really have to spend on this? How many users are going to benefit from this?