IT Workforce
Perspectives
To optimize how organizations
attract, develop and retain great
IT people, it is critical to evaluate
what happens at the line levels of
IT and how organizations source,
screen, onboard and manage
their workforce. TEKsystems’ IT
Talent Management Survey series
provides insight into what’s on
the mind of the IT leaders and IT
workers alike.
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a
high-performing team
It’s the middle of the fourth quarter, and the home team just scored a touchdown. As the
fans cheer in the stands, the quarterback and his receiver celebrate the play and jog off
the field. Immediately their teammates circle them to congratulate them and the head
coach gives a thumbs–up sign in acknowledgment. The quarterback’s coach brings his
clipboard over to the quarterback to discuss the next play and the wide receiver’s coach
asks his player to comment on the route he ran and the coverage he faced.
While the pressure on a professional athlete can be intense, coaches and trainers are united in a solitary goal
of ensuring the success of each player and thus, the entire team. The head coach oversees the entire team and
develops the strategy to bring the team to the post-season. Specialty coaches manage each functional area
and coach players in their specific roles. Professional athletes receive immediate, continuous feedback on their
performance to help them achieve their goals and promote teamwork.
This structure is not as common in the corporate world, even though the stakes are just as high. Since
organizational success is driven by employee performance, companies need formal processes around setting
performance expectations and providing quality feedback.
TEKsystems surveyed more than 2,000 IT professionals and more than 1,500 IT leaders. IT professionals provided
specific insight from the employee’s perspective, and the leaders who responded provided their insight from the
employer’s perspective. We asked each group to share insights on how important a performance management
program is to their organization, what most performance management programs consist of and what exactly
makes a performance management program successful.
TEKsystems.com | 1
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
Studying the Playbook: The
importance of effective
performance management
Effective teams are unified by a defining goal, such as
achieving a winning record or advancing to post-season
play, and all activities are aligned to the overarching
strategy for success. These teams clearly establish
objectives for each player, provide feedback to adjust
performance and measure this performance against a
benchmark in order to improve. Professional athletes
compete on high-performing, motivated teams,
where individual goals are tied to team goals and
players receive constant feedback to stay on track.
Coaches assess a quarterback’s accuracy, agility
and decision-making after every throw and make
immediate suggestions to improve the outcome of the
next throw. The player learns from this feedback and
adapts. Players are ranked within the team and their
skill set and these assessments are used to manage
expectations around playing time, salary and team
tenure.
Likewise, IT leaders and IT professionals recognize
that organizational success is contingent upon the
performance and productivity of the workforce.
Ninety-four percent of IT leaders believe performance
management efforts are important at their company; 84
percent of IT professionals agree. What’s more, a large
majority of professionals, 93 percent and 83 percent,
respectively, say that informal and formal feedback–
critical aspects of their performance management
systems–are important to individual success within
their organizations.
These findings are not surprising. After all, performance
management systems are the mechanisms by which
organizations align, groom and motivate their most
variable and strategic assets–their people.
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
94% of IT leaders
believe performance
management efforts
are important at their
company.
84% of IT professionals
agree that performance
management efforts
are important at their
company.
Watching the Film: Room for
improvement in performance
management
Despite the acknowledged importance of performance
management, many organizations fail to execute
their performance management systems effectively.
According to the survey, less than 50 percent of IT
professionals rate their organization’s performance
management system as effective in 10 out of 12
performance management goals including aligning
employee actions with strategic business objectives,
coaching and mentoring, and enabling discussions
around employee career paths. Moreover, less than half
of IT professionals believe that their managers are great
at performance management; 54 percent of IT leaders
agree. These findings suggest significant opportunity for
organizations to improve—and to attain greater levels
of employee engagement as well as organizational
performance as a result.
TEKsystems.com | 2
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
Less than 50 percent of IT professionals rate their organization’s
performance management system as effective in 10 out of 12
performance management goals
IT Professionals
Clarifying expectations
15%
Sharing praise/recognition for a job well done
15%
Aligning employee actions with strategic business objectives
11%
Providing the manager with employee feedback
11%
Reviewing professional achievements relative to goals
10%
Enabling discussion of employee’s career path
Evaluating compensation increases
28%
7%
Evaluating promotion readiness
6%
Providing legal documentation of poor performance
7%
Extremely effective
Effective
25%
22%
Neutral
Ineffective
Ranking the depth chart: Define performance
expectations early
At its core, a performance management system must
evaluate and reward employees’ abilities relative to
defined expectations. Unfortunately, only one-third of
IT professionals report that performance expectations
are always or often clearly defined for roles in their
organizations. Without clear expectations in place, IT
leaders and professionals alike identify inconsistencies
8%
9%
18%
30%
Extremely ineffective
3%
12%
18%
27%
33%
10%
10%
18%
29%
31%
3%
7%
17%
27%
27%
Calling an Audible:
Recommendations for better
performance management
systems
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
25%
27%
10%
13%
11%
19%
13%
5%
5%
3%
5%
7%
11%
10%
3%
7%
13%
17%
3%
8%
16%
26%
35%
29%
13%
27%
34%
7%
14%
27%
36%
9%
15%
22%
35%
13%
Coaching/mentoring
21%
38%
13%
Building relationships between manager/employee
Reviewing personal achievements relative to goals
40%
8%
15%
Don't know/unsure
in performance standards, poor goal setting and
subjectivity as key challenges to their performance
management systems.
There are several methods by which IT organizations
can improve clarity around employee performance
expectations. First, management must define the
objectives, skills and behaviors that are most important
to organizational success and align these attributes with
clear performance expectations for their employees.
Managers will then have a framework to measure
progress toward team goals and can use these
assessments to build career paths and development
opportunities for their employees. Next, these
expectations must be documented and communicated
to each employee, giving employees defined goals
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Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
to work toward. As 23 percent of IT professionals
report that they don’t receive specific examples in
their appraisals, managers should rely on these
expectations as a benchmark and assess employee
performance relative to them. Tying appraisals back to
stated expectations can also eliminate the dangerous
assumptions around favoritism or unfounded bias that
employees may make when faced with negative or
surprising feedback.
Managers will have a framework
toward measure progress to
team goals and can use these
assessments to build career paths
and development opportunities for
their employees.
“There’s a Flag on the Play”: Frequent feedback
keeps performance on track
To keep performance expectations on track, managers
should use feedback to motivate, educate and reward
employees. However, only about half of IT professionals
have formal performance reviews once or twice a year,
and they typically don’t receive enough feedback in
between. Sixty-eight percent of IT professionals would
prefer to receive feedback on a quarterly, monthly,
weekly or daily basis; 13 percent would like feedback
anytime their performance deviates from expectations.
Employees also believe that feedback itself has room
for improvement, as less than half of IT professionals
rate the quality of informal feedback as excellent or
good. Fifteen percent claim they don’t receive informal
feedback at all.
To encourage these discussions and improve the
quality of performance assessments, organizations
must prioritize feedback as critical to every manager’s
job and hold managers accountable to giving explicit,
thoughtful feedback to their employees throughout
the year. Employees can feel disheartened or
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
68%
68% of IT professionals would prefer to
receive feedback on a quarterly, monthly,
weekly or daily basis.
confused if significant feedback-positive or negativeis presented only annually or semi annually. They
doubt the importance of their behavior if a discussion
can be tabled for six months, and they question their
manager’s intentions for telling them so late after the
occurrence. In contrast, employees feel recognized,
appreciated and invested in when their manager
takes the time to acknowledge their work—leading to
higher levels of motivation. Employees also value the
opportunity to act on feedback given, allowing them to
make performance adjustments in real time, and avoid
potential surprises in scheduled reviews.
Hearing the Cheers of the Fans: Prompt feedback immediately addresses performance
While frequent feedback is key to helping employees
develop, feedback should also be targeted towards
employee behavior and delivered promptly. Onethird of IT professionals say poor performance isn’t
addressed effectively at their organizations because
it was allowed to go on for too long. Half of IT
professionals report it takes at least a quarter before
poor performance is addressed and nearly 20 percent
think it’s not addressed at all. Great performance also
goes unrecognized, as IT professionals identify the
lack of timely feedback and the manager’s ability to
provide accurate assessments of performance as top
improvement areas in their organization’s performance
management systems.
TEKsystems.com | 4
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
IT professionals say poor performance isn’t addressed effectively at their
organizations due to a variety of reasons.
Allowed to go on for too long
33%
Favoritism
24%
No specific examples are provided to the employee
23%
“Poor performance” is too subjective
22%
It is not addressed at all
Employees are not given a realistic opportunity to improve
Other
16%
12%
12%
Prompt feedback builds trust between employee and
manager. It also helps employees correct deviations
from performance expectations before minor issues
become habitual or increasingly problematic.
Conversely, delayed feedback often affects employee
morale, namely when teams bear the burden of
poor performers or when high performance goes
unrecognized.
Prompt feedback builds trust
between employee and manager.
Of course, it’s best if a manager can deliver feedback
as soon as superior or subpar performance occurs.
However, it’s not always possible for managers to be
so intimately involved in their employees’ workdays. To
make timely feedback a reality, managers must build
feedback into the operating rhythm of their work weeks.
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
Scheduled, periodic opportunities to observe employee
behavior and to review the status of their tasks and
deliverables are critical to ensuring managers and
employees connect on performance findings before
too much time elapses and the feedback grows stale
or irrelevant.
Talking to the Coach on the Sideline:
Direct feedback targets behavior
Feedback must be targeted to the specific issue at
hand. Nearly one-quarter of IT professionals report that
they don’t receive specific examples of poor behavior
during performance reviews. IT professionals also cite
their manager’s comfort level with giving necessary
tough feedback as a challenge with their organization’s
performance management system. Eleven percent of
professionals claim poor performance is handled by
termination in their organizations, implying they either
didn’t receive or understand any other warnings, such
as informal manager feedback, formal warnings or
write-ups.
TEKsystems.com | 5
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
Direct feedback helps bridge the gap between the
manager and employee perception, and there are several
guidelines managers should follow when delivering
frank assessments. First, there is a misperception
that direct feedback equals cruel or impassioned
dialogue between manager and employee, when in
actuality direct feedback can and should be delivered
in a calm, caring manner. Second, whenever possible,
managers should initiate face-to-face conversations,
as these interactions suggest greater investment by
the manager, allow for greater responsiveness and
promote open communication. Third, managers should
come prepared to cite specific behavioral examples
of performance and tie the conversation back to the
defined goals and expectations. Doing so shows the
employee that the manager is paying attention to their
actions and is consistent in their expectations for what
high-quality performance looks like. The manager
should also be clear in outlining the consequences of
the behavior–positive or negative–to avoid surprises and
unclear direction. The conversation should conclude
with expectations for the future and reinforcement to
help the employee succeed, or continue to demonstrate
exceptional performance.
initially feel hesitant or uncomfortable. Additionally, many
managers may view an open invitation for feedback from
their employees as a threat to their authority. However,
two-way feedback can be an invaluable tool in creating a
high-performance environment. The key is how the twoway feedback is facilitated.
Radio to the Booth:
Enable two-way communication
Often it is best to separate the times in which employees
receive feedback and those in which managers receive
it. Having dialogue about performance for each party
simultaneously could lead to a tit for tat situation in
which managers and employees feel they need to adapt
how they review one another based on the positive or
negative issues initially discussed in the conversation.
Additionally, simply asking employees to give feedback
is an important requirement of management–but not
enough to truly achieve a solid, trusting relationship
between the two parties. Managers must also respond
to feedback provided in a way that clearly indicates
their receptivity and appreciation for the employees’
perspective. Managers do not need to do everything an
employee suggests; however, managers should address
what they will and won’t do and why, so the employee
feels heard and encouraged to continue to offer upward
feedback. Above all, the manager should thank the
employee for the feedback and serve as a role model for
the employee. If an employee sees a manager as open,
understanding and grateful for his or her perspective,
the employee may adopt similar traits when receiving
feedback.
According to IT professionals and IT leaders alike,
building a good relationship between manager
and employee is rated as a top five goal in effective
performance management systems. However, less
than half (48 percent) of IT professionals say their
organizations achieve this goal. The mechanisms
by which IT professionals recommend performance
management systems be evaluated reinforces their
desire for a stronger manager/employee relationship.
The top two methods they prefer to evaluate
performance management systems involve a two-way
dialogue: 51 percent say they want to provide periodic,
formal and structured feedback to management and 43
percent say they want to provide informal feedback to
management.
To encourage manager/employee relationship building
through the performance management system,
performance feedback must be both given as well as
received by managers. Of course, most employees are
not accustomed to providing upward feedback and may
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
51% of IT professionals
say they want to provide
periodic, formal and
structured feedback to
management
43% of IT professionals
say they want to provide
informal feedback to
management.
TEKsystems.com | 6
Create a winning team by leveraging a
performance management system
Guide your employees to achieve success as a high-performing team
Reaching the End Zone:
Conclusion
About Us
The fans cheer wildly as the clock winds down to
the end of the game, and the home team jogs off
the field with another victory. After the game, the
quarterback and the receiver will field questions in
press conferences and hear their coachs’ assessment
of the play. Over the next few days, the team and
coaches will review film of the game to pinpoint areas
of improvement, evaluate plays and make changes to
enhance the team’s performance for the next game.
For the rest of the evening and throughout the next
week, fans, radio hosts and sportswriters will discuss
the players’ performance, debate their effectiveness
and offer opinions on how the players should prepare
for upcoming games. The feedback cycle is continuous
and gives each player the opportunity to learn from his
actions and improve his performance.
People are at the heart of every successful business
initiative. At TEKsystems, we understand people. Every
year we deploy over 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000
client sites across North America, Europe and Asia.
Our deep insights into IT human capital management
enable us to help our clients achieve their business
goals—while optimizing their IT workforce strategies.
We provide IT staffing solutions, IT talent management
expertise and IT services to help our clients plan, build
and run their critical business initiatives. Through our
range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our
clients where they are, and take them where they want
to go, the way they want to get there.
Just as the football team supports each player,
a high-performing organization should give each
employee the opportunity to develop skills and receive
coaching. The most effective teams combine a strong
foundation of defined expectations and aligned goals
with a commitment to improvement. Management
plays a critical role in employee growth and a strong
performance management system uses quality
feedback to lead employees to success.
TEKsystems® 7437 Race Road, Hanover, MD 21076 | 888.835.7978 | www.TEKsystems.com | TEKsystems, Inc. is an Allegis Group, Inc. company.
Certain names, products and services listed in the document are trademarks, register trademarks, or service marks of their respective companies.
Copyright © 2012 TEKsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
IT Workforce Perspectives Survey
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