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Skills are the new black

Sheryle Moon, Information Age

19/02/2008 12:52:57

While environmental sustainability has now become an important touchstone for the ICT industry, we will need to embrace a much broader concept of sustainability in the future.

Skills are "the new black", and retaining them must become an integral part of the way that we think about environmental design in ICT, alongside all the things that we usually think of when we consider sustainable industry practice.

Traditional concepts of sustainability are important. When we think of sustainability in environmental design we usually think of factors such as energy and lighting. It is clear that this definition of sustainability will continue to be a top priority for the ICT industry, as it has proven to be nationally in both politics and wider Australian industry.

The new government moved quickly to ratify the Kyoto agreement, and it is now engaged in the complex processes of weighing potential carbon output targets against the requirements of Australian industry and the national economy.

Contributing 1.52 per cent of total carbon emissions means that the ICT industry will inevitably play an important role, and it has already willingly begun to tackle this problem on many fronts.

Smarter management of power consumption has become an increasingly accepted norm in business technology practice. And improvements to production processes and equipment manufacture - like the introduction of star ratings and auto power control - are also becoming standard practice. Many enthusiastic businesses are also embracing the idea of purchased carbon offset programs.

These are all important programs for the future of our industry. And most workers are interested in these areas too - especially Generation Y workers, who are more likely to ask about carbon footprint policies than their own prospects for promotion when they enter an organisation.

While the reduction of "power in and carbon out" remains the current focus of world media, however, the ICT industry will need to think much more laterally about the concept of sustainability in order to remain economically viable and intellectually relevant into the future.

There are some clear threats to the sustainability of our industry that need to be addressed, and most of them are being driven by three factors: falling ICT student enrolments, an increasingly competitive labour market and the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation. They are a potent combination, and potentially lethal to the skills that ICT relies upon.

There will be no 'one size fits all' solution to the problems that these factors are creating for the ICT industry. However, the principles will be the same for all levels of business: if these challenges are to be successfully navigated we need strong leadership and integrated programs that will transform the nature of industry workplaces.

On this note, I read recently that the Government has put an end to taxpayer-funded massage for public servants. The interesting question is, why was it deemed to be a good investment in the first place? It seems a fair guess that this was a strategy is to counter the effects of a stressful workplace.

Foremost as an industry, ICT will need to address the health of our workplaces to attract and retain the skills that are needed. A "sick" workplace, both environmentally and managerially, has become too common in modern business, and the effects are now beginning to be well documented.

Job stress - which one Victorian study defines as "the combination of high job demands and low job control" - takes an enormous toll on employees where it becomes entrenched. The study concluded that job stress is in fact "a substantial public health problem" that significantly contributes to cardiovascular disease and depression in the community.

Other studies assert that a significant driver of stress in the workplace comes from management bullying and harassment. Estimates of the amount of time spent by managers resolving conflict in the workplace can range up to a staggering 90%.

These are expensive problems for employers - but far worse when you consider the cost to our most precious resource, a skilled workforce.

The unhealthy workplace is a strong driver of absenteeism: one in five sick days can be attributed to stress, not illness, and emotional factors account for up to 61 per cent of lost time through absence. Worse still, these issues are among the most significant factors in high staff turnover and separation. Can your business really afford this? As an industry we cannot.

By necessity, the design of sustainable organisations must move beyond environmental and efficiency concerns to embrace the challenge of changing workforce demographics.

This will mean developing healthier workplaces: designing a sustainable skills environment, establishing employee relationships based on trust, listening to employee needs and delivering innovative responses. These outcomes will mean different things to different people.

And our industry is well placed to deliver the kind of solutions that will make all the difference. For example, Teleworking is an increasingly popular way to respond to the needs of employees in the workplace, with one IBM study finding it to be preferred over routine office attendance.

Many of the concerns that arise around the concept of offsite employees actually turn out to be unfounded; the critical elements of communication around job responsibilities, goals, objectives and deadlines are often made far clearer where manager and employee are in remote locations. And yes - you can see them working when you need to.

There is a lesson here for the physical office. The age-old management principles of establishing trust, communicating a clear vision, and setting goals and objectives that align with both corporate and individual values are the ones that the ICT industry needs to turn to in order to face the challenges of the future.

What the industry needs are new ideas to deliver these values to our workplaces in order to change them for the better. Our industry should be in good hands then, because innovation is what we do best.

We cannot afford to sit idly by while problems that we have long been aware of eat into our most valuable resource: the skills of our workforce. 2008 needs to become the year of the sustainable workplace.

Sheryle Moon is CEO of the Australian Information Industry Association