CIOs say that the current scenario has resulted in changed IT budgets and project priorities which have a direct impact on the staffing plans
IT leaders acknowledge that organizations have continued to recruit candidates despite the pandemic lockdown and the resultant economic slowdown. They say that staffing plans remain unchanged for most major organizations. Recruits have been hired as contractors with the end goal of converting them to full-time employees, provided they fulfill the requirements.
Some IT leaders have used their supplemental resources to fill up the resource gap, contractors from vendors have helped to build up the additional workforce. CIOs say that enterprise IT staffing plans have become complex and streamlined over the years.
While organizations have continued with their recruiting processes, IT leaders acknowledge that they may have to update the strategies soon. The current uncertain scenario has made it difficult to identify resources with the correct skillset and required experience.
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Most CIOs have adopted the 60-day plans. They say that economic status across the world is uncertain. If the economy crashes they will have to lay-off staff as the organizations will not have as many projects in hand.
CIOs have to keep strategies ready on how to recalibrate a reduced workforce if the situation worsens post-COVID. Some had to change their current strategies to meet the current requirement where employees are being hired to work from a remote location.
For such scenarios, they had streamlined the IT infrastructure, as reconfiguration was required to enable such a large volume of remote connections to the central database.
IT leaders are adopting forward-looking measures like shifting to cloud and better employee collaboration. They hope to satisfy the staffing requirement for at least the remainder of 2020. CIOs acknowledge that recruitment is continuing even for future projects as a measure to lock resources, as such skillsets are rare.
Business strategies for the second-half of 2020
The pandemic has resulted in a sudden increase in demand for resources skilled in areas like collaboration, security, and cloud platforms. They have resorted to hiring temp resources to handle issues in break/ fix and help desk teams. Such contingency workers act as buffers while the IT leaders get remote employees equipped with the necessary software.
Workers adapting to the pandemic
CIOs point out that as IT budgets have become flexible, organizations are avoiding both massive layoffs and a high volume of permanent recruits. Organizations that shifted to an agile mode of working have depended more on permanent workers and steadily decreased the count of temp workers.
Their recruitment requirements have changed. They no longer prioritize the same location members and instead are looking for recruits who are skilled in required domains even in the remote work environment. The talent pool volume has increased drastically.
