UK
When politicians, usually presidents, come close to admitting an error, they will say, “Mistakes were made.”
As CEOs and other executives order the layoff of hundreds of IT staffers, they are saying, “Mistakes will be made.”
The news has been harsh and unrelenting. One report estimates that 330,000 financial services jobs have been lost since the economic crisis began in the US last year.
According to a research from the City of London, the UK is set to lose 35,000 financial services jobs before the end of the year.
The authors of the report say that hiring depends on economic growth, which won’t happen for quite some time. “We’ll have slow growth for the next few years, and that takes us to 2013 or 2014,” says Stuart Fraser, chairman of the policy and resources committee for the City of London.
For a CIO, this is especially bad news, as cutting staff and doubling or tripling the workload for stressed IT workers will inevitably lead to shortcuts, unfinished and delayed projects, and diminished quality control.
If an IT team has been through round after round of layoffs, the attention to detail will suffer. Outsourcing to a third party – whether in the same country or around the globe – means time spent in meetings and trips to the outsourcing headquarters, while a small staff works on IT projects at home.
Telling people to work harder and faster is no longer the answer. It might have worked in the first weeks of a crisis but not as we approach the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG, which was the psychological starting-point of this recession.
Are investment firms prepared to accept responsibility for these mistakes? Imagine if disaster struck and no one knew the emergency procedures. “Where’s Jerry? He’s supposed to know how to divert the data to the business continuity site and activate the backup servers.” Sadly, Jerry was laid off in June in a quiet staff reduction sweep. One day he was there, and now his office is empty.
Mistakes will be made.
Phil Albinus is editor of financial technology magazine Waters
www.watersonline.com
IT staff are ten-a-penny and can be rounded up via any agency. Name your skillset and they’ve got ‘em.
If the article means by “IT staff” those that offer IT server/desktop support to the rest of the business and are responsible for backups, DR etc then it’s not hard to find people with these skillsets. However, it does take time to learn about the IT infrastructure of a business and it’s fair enough to say that you can’t simply replace IT staff overnight except for maybe the most trivial tasks.
John – what’s your point??
John does not value the contributions of IT staff. IT staff are not animals to be ’rounded up’ and without us how would any organisation today function efficiently? Most like myself who have dedicated their working lives to this industry, investing many extra unpaid hours and late nights to help users and businesses in any way that we can have been treated badly by this recession. I for one am glad that the industry is beginning to recognise it’s mistake in laying off so many key workers. The only reason for there to be ‘ten a-penny’ is because of the number of jobs being axed, which I would have thought was pretty obvious if John had properly read the article. As someone in this field I know that it takes hard work and dedication to be an IT professional and to build up a committed team, and do not appreciate the flippancy of John’s remark. Lets just hope that John’s not affected by this recession!
A good IT strategy and innovative IT team can drive the business and offer first mover advantages. Think of what Google has achieved. If you think IT is some backoffice function rather than a business driver then yours would be a somewhat archaic view, John. What you are referring to is the most junior of IT positions which are easily replaceable or ten a penny; not specialised or consulting roles which where IT is used to drive the business.