More IT directors want to hire than fire

More IT directors are looking to hire rather than fire IT employees, according to research by ReThink Recruitment.

The survey questioned 89 IT directors from a wide range of sectors, such as financial, retail and engineering, in February this year.

The results showed 34 per cent of directors in the UK were looking to hire staff over the next year compared to 20 per cent who think they will have to lay people off in that time. The other 46 per cent stated that they were likely to keep a recruitment freeze over that period.

Michael Bennett, director of ReThink Recruitment, said: “On balance IT directors remain reasonably optimistic about taking on new staff and skills. Very few expect a repeat of the job cut carnage that followed the 2001/2 post dot com downturn. IT departments are much leaner now and many IT directors feel they have already cut down to the bone.”

However, the results do have a negative side, with a four per cent increase in the number of directors looking to make cuts, compared to the same survey conducted six months previously. It also showed that 32 per cent of IT departments had already cut jobs in the last year.

There is also concern about workloads. With budgets being slashed the results showed 22 per cent of the directors had a “major concern” about delivering IT support and projects with their newly allocated and smaller budgets. A further 18 per cent had a “major concern” that the quality of their department’s work would suffer if more staff cuts were made.

The biggest concern they seem to have, cited by 61 per cent of respondents, is the anticipation that as the budgets get smaller their workloads will go up regardless.

Bennett said: “As IT becomes ever more integrated into the way organisations work the lag between a cut in IT budgets and poorer overall performance becomes shorter and shorter. Demanding that IT Departments do more for less then is not sustainable in the long term.”

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