20-something techies who quit after 1 year

IT staff turnover - particularly among 20- and 30-somethings -- is making it harder for Trebino to respond to HFA's changing business model as the music industry moves online.

Network World spoke recently with Trebino about the turnover he is seeing among his younger IT professionals and the steps he's taking to retain these workers.

It's been very mixed because I have two different development teams. I have the core developers, the RPG and LANSA developers, and they have five, 10, 15 years with the company. They are very then entrenched, they understand the music business, they understand the research, and they understand how we relate to the music business. On the Java side, everyone right now has been here less than a year. We have excessive turnover for my Web-based team. It's a younger workforce. They have different needs, different requirements and different desires than our slightly older workforce. I'm seeing them being much more [transient.] It's much more challenging to get the newer generation of folks interested in trying to understand the business vs. looking only at the research.

Bit more stability

There's a bit more stability, however I don't think we'll see drastic changes unless our business were to change. The new folks coming in all have similar mindsets and drivers. One of our newest and strongest Java developers is to tell the truth not in that younger generation. He is much more eager to learn and explore, and he doesn't get frustrated as quickly. We're looking at how do we change our project assignments and change our application owners because we're not going to change the personality of the workforce.

Where in the past we used to do single ownership on a project, now we're doing dual ownership on projects. We're teaming people up to look at our most key systems to make sure they are optimal. We're giving them latitude to create enhancements. We're trying to instill a different sense of ownership. They've got to take something that exists, however they don't have to live with it the way it exists. Secondly, we're working more closely with folks to determine their strengths and desires and align them to the right systems. Third, as new developers come in, we are teaming them with a business partner to help them understand the impact of their system on the business. We're trying to get them more invested in the strategy. We're trying to engage them in where the company is going.

Few years away from that

I'm a few years away from that. Nevertheless I have two of my folks who will be eligible for retirement first. Knowing in other words coming is part of why we brought in the LANSA [software development] tool and why we're spreading knowledge around Cognos [business analytics] across the entire team. It's in effect about cross training. The other thing we are doing is evolving away from the old technologies.

I do. I'm hoping the steps we are taking to adapt to the common personality traits of the younger workforce will help us retain them. The biggest point is to get them aware of and engaged in the new business opportunities here.