Non-tech businesses are at risk from the technology boom. Do you run a medical clinic, a retail chain, or a manufacturing company? You are at risk of losing important talent—greater risk than may be obvious. However, strategies to retain your geeks can help you survive.
You may say, "It's not fair. My business is not booming. Why should I have to compete with LinkedIn, Facebook or Apple?"
Okay, it's not fair. Didn't your father tell you life isn't fair? But it's the reality.
Even non-tech companies risk losing their IT employees.
You may think that your information technology staff lack the cutting edge skills so valued by Silicon Valley start-ups, but don't be so sure. For example, a hot area right now is creating apps (short for applications) for cell phones. "Gee, my guys don't know anything about that," you think. Wait. Are you sure they are not writing cells phone apps in their spare time? Some of the iPhone apps have made their authors millions of dollars.
iPhone apps are written in a version the C programming language, while Android apps are written in Java. Some of your people are programming in these languages right now. If not, they would probably be comfortable coming up to speed on a new programming language.
Once your people know C or Java, they learn about some tools provided for free by Google or Apple to help people write apps. For simple apps, this is all that's needed. For more complex apps, the programmer may need to write some code for the app to read and write from a database. There's a good chance that your company's programmers write that kind of code every day.
There are certainly some extra tricks that the programmer will have to learn to do a great job writing a smart phone app, but these tricks are learnable.
This is just one example. There are many more possibilities, though some of your staff won't fit into the new world. A person who mastered COBOL 30 years ago and does not want to learn anything new will be a stable, reliable staff member. Your bright, ambitious people, however, have already started wondering what life would be like elsewhere.
The connection between the tech boom and your company applies even if you only have people with fairly basic skills. Consider:
- Joe works at a large medical clinic. He is competent in Java, experienced with complex databases and optimization. He takes a job at a glamorous high tech company.
- Sally works at a manufacturing company, writing small programs in the C++ language, mostly focused on making database information more useful to managers. After Joe leaves, the medical clinic decides to hire Sally. She isn't as qualified as Joe, but she can do the job and she's anxious to leave her current employer.
- Fred works at a retail chain. He has been taught to run queries on the company's database. He took one programming course at the local junior college. Although he's not the manufacturing company's ideal candidate, they hire him to replace Sally. Nobody better qualified was available.
As we economists sometimes say, everything is connected to everything else. The tech boom is trickling down to workers who are only mildly techie.