How do you handle motivational factors in a systematic way?
“Well, I know that Paula doesn't like to work in oil & gas industry and Jack has a 10 year experience in PHP, but he doesn't want to use it. No wait I mean Jeff. Hehe. Anyway we got this covered.”
The most important factor during and IT agencies resource planning process is to systematically take motivational factors into consideration. For the project or assignment to be successful, you have to match the motivation of the talent. Mess it up and you have a high risk of unsuccessful project, bad customer experience and in the worst case, that experienced developer will "move on to new challenges".
On the other hand when making a successful match between the motivation of the talent and the challengers of the project your employee satisfaction will rise, the projects will be successful and the customers will be happy.
So how to systematically taking the wishes and hopes of the talents into account?
In this brief article, we will share the best practices that we have heard from market leaders on how they repeatedly fill the wishes of their talents when making resource planning.
Document the motivational factors
First things first: let's make that tacit knowledge explicit! Set up a systematic process in which you dig out the hidden wishes and hopes of the employees regarding their next assignment / project. This topic should be handled in a one-to-one meeting and the agenda should be pre-defined and visible to the employee. This way they can come prepared and are able to specifically address what they want the next project include.
You can really go deep on how you address the wishes such as "absolutely no", "if nothing else", "absolutely yes" but I recommend you start with the basics: "yes" or "no".
Remember that not only the technologies used bring motivation (or unmotivation) to work on a project but there are other sides as well. The domain or the customer can bring out the motivational factors. I heard a story where a developer said that he hates Drupal and never want's to use it, but when his favourite football team wanted new websites with Drupal, this developer took the project with shiny eyes.
Transparent database
Now that you have managed to set up a process on how to constantly dig out the wishes of the talents, make sure that the documentation happens in a transparent place. Sometimes when doing "development conversations" once a year with the employees, the data is securely and safely put into place where it can be then checked again in the next development conversation that happens once a year.
This is of course not the thing you want when running a smooth and effective resource planning process. You want the motivational insights to be clearly visible for anyone making decisions or suggestions regarding resourcing solutions.
Rotational needs
“I asked for rotation three months ago and nothing happened. That's the actual reason I'm leaving the company.”
No one want's to learn this from the hard way. One of your best developers is leaving the company since their wishes regarding rotational needs was not addressed.
So what does the word rotation mean in this context and how can you make sure to address it properly?
By rotational needs I mean the situation where your employee has been working on an assignment for several months and for some reason they want another assignment. Now is your chance to show how you support their wishes in the best possible way.
The first thing to do is clarify the urgency. Does the rotation need to happen now? Is it ok, if it happens in one month? Or is it ok if it takes a bit longer?
After this is clarified you can do next actions accordingly. If the rotation needs to happen now, don't stay waiting for the next matching assignment. Replace the developer with another one asap and put him/her working on internal developments if necessary.
Long term career development vs. short term wishes
“In the future I want to be an astronaut. But for now, I think that the next project should involve some AI/ML challenges.”
In a recruiting process HR mangers love to dig the motivational factors with a question "where do you want to be in five years". This is a very good question and it really forces the candidate to do some self reflection. This kind of conversations are good to have with candidates employees.
However when talking about resource planning process you shouldn't mix long term career development to short term wishes. Make sure that you have a separate place to document these two since the requirements are different: long term career development is something that the employee doesn't necessarily want to share to everyone but short term wishes has to be shared in order to find the perfect resource plan solution.
Summary
To summarize everything these are the steps:
- Have an iterative process in place where you constantly ask the wishes of the talents
- Document the wishes in a transparent place
- Make sure you have a process for rotational needs
- Don't mix up long term career development to short term wishes
As an end result you should have up to date motivational insights in place for a smoooooth resource planning process. This resuts in happy employees which usually results in successful projects and happy customers.
