Tech Professionals: Are Bonuses Falling Short?

Many technology professionals (43%) did not receive a bonus last year. Among those who did, about 30% said they were dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with it, according to the 2015 Inside Technology Market Report released by Greythorn, a specialist technology and healthcare IT recruitment consultancy.

“Financial incentives—whether in the form of base pay or bonuses—are important, especially when we’re talking about highly sought after talent,” Ben Weber, managing director of Greythorn North America, said in a statement. “Getting the payscale right can be challenging in such a competitive industry. But even employers who offer premium compensation packages often suffer from a false sense of security—the talent they’ve worked hard to attract may not stick around.” Greythorn in late 2014 surveyed its database of more than 300 IT professionals in the U.S. about their careers as well as the current job market conditions.

The employees who reported being dissatisfied in their current jobs ranked management as the number one reason (27%), followed by job responsibilities (23%) and the workplace culture (20%). Dissatisfaction with salary ranked fourth, with 13% of respondents citing it as a reason for being unhappy in their jobs.

“Hiring and retaining talent is a lot like building a spider web,” Lindsey Thorne, Greythorn’s tech team manager for open source and big data, said in a statement. “It’s part math and matrix—knowing the industry, knowing the region, knowing the company and individual in quantifiable ways, and connecting all that in a useful way. But it’s also an art. If a candidate’s work style doesn’t match up to the company culture or the management style employed by leadership, there’s going to be a lot of unhappiness—and ultimately will cost the company additional money and time when that person decides to find another job.”

How can address unhappy employees? In addition to maintaining great communications with team members, many businesses are adopting talent management and human capital management platforms. Some of the platforms -- from the likes of ADP and Workday, among others -- leverage big data and analytics to identify employees who are likely to leave the organization. From there, the employer can potentially take proactive actions to retain the employee.

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