It seems to me that in the company I work for, the only way to get a salary rise is to take on a management role or to bring in high levels of consultancy income. Having a highly developed level of technical expertise that’s needed to develop and maintain our products, and respond to enquiries from customers is not valued, even though our success depends upon this expertise. This has in my view contributed to a loss of key staff. Is this a common thing? How might we get over this?
Thursday, Mar 6 2008 ·
Technical skills not valued
Tags: Posted Questions | 4 Comments
4 responses so far ↓
A well balanced company will allocate a percentage of its scarce resources into the various divisions in order to ensure a healthy growth of the company. A company that concentrates on marketing to the exclusion of all other factors will surely experience failure in the long term. The same can be said for a company that is exclusively focused on production and product development to the exclusion of marketing research. A healthy company will allocate time and resources into the important fields of:
1. Marketing
2. Research and development
3. Production
4. Administration
5. Financial reporting and financial systems
6. Human resources
7. Logistics
8. Corporate governance
9. Social responsibility
10. Customer care
The mix of the above can of course vary depending on where the company is in its life cycle. A brand new enterprise will of course aggressively pursue turnover and will concentrate resources on marketing to the exclusion of all else in its efforts to capture market share. A more mature company will look to its social responsibilities as an important means to its longevity and ultimate survival. Business cycles also demand different emphasis of the business essentials. The better companies will vary their emphasis based on trading conditions and their long term strategies. However I can assure you that the best companies will maintain a healthy balance in their strategies. They will not overlook long term goals for short term gains.
If you have a technical ability that is fundamental to the wellbeing of the institution that employs you and that institution seems to be favouring other inputs, it is indeed reason to be concerned. It may be a short term strategic decision or it may be a fundamental strategic error on behalf of the company. It is best to bring this to the attention of management and sell the concept to them. If they choose to ignore the valuable contribution your department has to offer then maybe it is time for you to move on to an environment that values your expertise.
David Katz |22 Apr 2008 at 14:59
My short answer is that your organisation may benefit from a dual career path for the technical expertise upon which you depend.
For the longer answer I’d like to explore the issues a little deeper, examining the question from both sides, since I believe the best results will occur when the needs of the organisation coincide with the needs of the individual. It’s a question which cuts across the issues of knowledge management, talent management and reward strategy.
As you suggest, career progression has traditionally been through the management route which is not necessarily suited to every ambitious individual. In fact, two of my own past managers (very good managers, incidentally) confided to me they felt they’d been promoted because they were good at their old jobs rather than because they had any particular skill at managing other people.
It’s certainly not a given that the skills required to make a good manager are well-developed in the skillset of the good technical expert. Management may not necessarily suit his or her natural personality style and may not play to his or her strengths.
Moreover, the talented technical expert may be reluctant to be shoehorned into a managerial role for fear of losing autonomy, opportunities to express creativity, the intellectual challenge present in the technical position, plus a lack of opportunity to demonstrate one’s own excellence repeatedly. So the individual may be positively demotivated by the prospect of progression if it’s possible only through management!
And yet, in rejecting this traditional career path the individual may feel stifled by the limits on pay that you refer to. Then add to the mix a lack of recognition, status, and influence that might come from declining the management route, all of which contribute to more demotivation. This may then develop into resentment at a lack of reward and recognition for the value the individual brings to the organisation.
So, unenthused by the prospect of management, the frustrated individual may nevertheless be actively demotivated by a lack of advancement. Little wonder the talented individual perceives a new employer as the most attractive option!
But what is the present employer supposed to do about this? Leaving the issue unaddressed is likely to lead to diminishing loyalty, diminishing discretionary commitment and, inevitably, diminishing performance. These result ultimately in the loss of key staff, which you suspect has already happened.
And departing staff take with them not just their valuable expertise but a lot of tacit knowledge and market information. The investment made in their selection and training has been lost and now needs to be made again. Further, the departure of these employees may send subtle signals to others about the long term prospects within the organisation as well as signals about its commitment to technical development.
Of course why managers and fee-generating consultants get salary rises is easy to understand: they influence the company’s profitability in ways that are visible and often easy to measure. Therefore, anyone whose contribution is less visible must demonstrate real value to the organisation if its leaders are to act responsibly in reward and retention.
This requires the organisation to identify which skills, which individuals, which behaviours and which values it wishes to retain. By first clarifying then making explicit such practices, organisations can begin to embed a culture with which talented individuals can more fully engage.
Back in my business school days we heard repeatedly that, since products and processes are increasingly replicable, it’s often people which are the source of much competitive advantage. You say that your company’s success depends on its technical expertise to develop and maintain its products, and look after the customers whose revenue you no doubt wish to retain. It seems likely your sales people and high fee-earning consultants depend on these highly developed talents also. Perhaps your corporate strategy is influenced by the input and opinions of your technical team. So you see there are arguments to be made for managing these key staff in a way that benefits both employer and employee.
So looking at opportunities and options for action, then, here are a few thoughts for the organisation:
• Set about developing a culture in which technical expertise is respected, rewarded and recognised.
• Create a goal of becoming an Employer of Choice for your technical stars of the future.
• Indentify the technical skills your organisation needs, then implement policies to attract, develop and retain them.
• Find out what motivates your technical stars most and explore way to provide it.
• Offer bonuses for agreed performance measures or equity where appropriate and possible.
• Get creative about ways to reward and motivate your talented individuals. Ideas could include flexible hours, sabbaticals, time off for study, flexible benefits whereby pay can be sacrificed for holiday or other work/life benefits.
• Provide other ways for your technical stars to shine by demonstrating Thought Leadership in articles and papers, at committees, conferences, with industry or academic bodies.
• Offer the individual some time providing consultancy for your organisation with commensurate pay for the relevant portion of time.
• Organise some short term job-swaps to promote greater awareness of what’s actually involved in differing job types.
• Create a separate career path alongside the traditional management route with job titles, status and remuneration appropriate to the individuals’ real value.
A final word on pay. According to Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene theory of job satisfaction, “hygiene” factors such as pay cause dissatisfaction if inadequate but have little impact on long-term satisfaction when present in higher quantities. So though your colleagues may claim to be leaving because of low pay, it’s possible they’re using this as a proxy for some other unarticulated dissatisfaction. Unless of course your rates of pay are so low as to qualify as “hygiene” issues, which I sincerely hope is not the case. Either way, it would be worth having the data in order to be able to challenge such claims if necessary.
In summary, it’s about finding out what works best for your fellow stakeholders and identifying where that matches the needs of the organisation. And that might take some work. I recently heard the story of a Chief Executive who demanded the HR department become as well-acquainted with the motivations and desires of their staff as the marketing department was with their customers. How many organisations can claim that level of commitment to its people?
Finally, and in the spirit of a coaching dialogue, to what action are YOU now committing? Do keep us posted.
Debra White |22 Apr 2008 at 16:34
Hi, Debra. I’m from Ukraine. In this country now all is opposite. In HR market much more humanitarian specialists than technical. Of course 80% of these “specialists” really have not high or even middle level of knowledge. Our system of education is low in this time. But even humanitarian specialists, who has sufficient qualification is not needed in HR market. Reason for this is that country needed much resources for natural manufacture (in the broad sense). Moreover almost all qualified personal wants to leave the country, because in Ukraine very difficult conditions for life.
For example, I’m qualified lawyer (now I am interesting just user agreement, privacy policy etc for web and software), some years in university and after I was interested and worked also in economics sphere (especially marketing, business planning, currencies and derivatives market). But now I’m strongly learning software development and I want to work with this all next time. Our system can not give to me good proposal, and I am looking on west too like many specialists in Ukraine (US or Europe). So, problem in your Country is much narrower and less than in Ukraine.
P.S. How you can see English is not my native language, I’m just learning. I am sorry for my grammatical mistakes.
Andrew |10 Apr 2010 at 12:02
In my experience its very common – but in fairness there’s also a reverse prejudice that appears among technically oriented people, which is that only technical stuff matters and that sales an management are irrelevant and fluffy.
To progress you need to acquire management and people skills as well as technical ones – those with a good combination are very rare!
Gill Hunt |30 Jul 2010 at 08:59
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