Report claims IT departments want better managers

Mon, 10 Jan 2011

Report claims IT departments want better managers

A report from IT consultancy Xantus has found that 41 per cent of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) want to improve the management skills in their departments.

Almost all of the respondents - 93 per cent - agreed that staff with the right level of management skills are difficult to find and recruit. The CIOs questioned worked in firms with turnovers of between £250 million and £1 billion.

Most of the CIOs agreed that more needed to be done to align management skills with business strategies through staff training and opportunities to learn at work. Pete Stafford, the CIO at building society chain Nationwide, explained, "We all know that the IT function must get closer to the business strategy and to what the business is trying to do, but it is only going to achieve this by acting like an equal."

Another major problem identified among IT managers was that they often have problems communicating with other departments and staff within their companies. Communication is among the ‘soft skills’ that are in demand within IT departments. Group CIO at National Grid, David Lister, agreed: "Most IT organisations need much stronger skills in their 'front tier,' the part of their business that interfaces with the rest of the organisation."

The report concludes that management skills, leadership skills and communication skills are the hardest to track down among applicants applying for jobs in the IT sector.

Mike Bell, the IT director at Kingfisher added, "People with these skills... are hard to find and expensive, but I would rather have a small number of people with these skills in my department than twice as many technicians."

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