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Turnover in IT consulting remains high despite attractive salaries, as consultants seek a more enriching employee experience. Facing major HR challenges, IT consulting firms must reinvent their strategies to attract and retain their talent. What is the impact of employee experience on economic performance? How can digital tools reduce turnover? Wobee and People Square provide you with key answers to master this challenge!
With a growth rate of around 6.3% in 2023, according to estimates from Numeum, the IT services sector (ESN, as these firms are known in France) is booming more than ever. But while these companies are doing well economically, they face HR challenges that they sometimes struggle to solve. The digital sector is an ultra-dynamic, highly competitive industry that is being hit hard by the shortage of skilled labor.
In 2021, hiring pressures in IT services firms were 2.5 times higher than across all other sectors. (Kyu hiring pressure barometer)
75% of IT services firms say they had difficulty finding candidates for the last positions they advertised. (Stafiz)
On top of the war for talent, IT services firms must also deal with major business issues related to the engagement and retention of their consultants: turnover, ghosting, loss of company culture and disengagement. All of these directly affect their economic performance, their productivity and their employer brand.
The turnover rate in IT services firms is twice the average for French companies. (HEC)
Today, more than half of large and mid-sized IT services firms report difficulty retaining their talent. (Grand Angle ESN study, KPMG & Syntec Numérique)
The challenge facing IT services firms today is therefore considerable: meeting their clients' digital transformation needs while attracting and retaining the best talent in the sector. To get there, offering consultants a strong, engaging and memorable employee experience remains the key!
In this article, we will look at the undeniable role employee experience plays in reducing turnover in IT services firms, which levers can reduce it, and how digital tools can help prevent it.
Turnover in IT services firms is a complex phenomenon, often driven by a multitude of factors. Understanding these causes is essential to put effective talent retention strategies in place. Here are the main reasons employees leave their jobs.
To counter these multiple causes of turnover, it is crucial to put effective retention strategies in place.
The turnover rate is calculated by dividing the number of departures by the average headcount over a given period, then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if a company with 100 employees sees 10 departures in a year, its turnover rate is 10%.
However, this raw figure does not give a complete picture. To refine your analysis, you can also calculate voluntary turnover (departures initiated by employees) and involuntary turnover (dismissals, retirements). This will give you a better idea of the causes and possible solutions. Ultimately, understanding and monitoring your turnover rate is crucial to diagnosing internal problems and improving talent retention.
While IT services firms are financially healthy, economic performance remains the lifeblood of any business! And today more than ever, for an IT services firm to reduce turnover, and therefore to prosper, it must make sure it offers its employees an employee experience worthy of the name.
"Investing in a positive employee experience is proving to be a wise strategic choice for sustainable economic growth in our sector."
Yoann Lourteau, COO of Finaxys
A recent study by Josh Bersin, a recognized analyst in leadership and management, shows that companies with a real employee experience strategy are twice as likely to exceed their financial targets and satisfy their customers.
So there is a real link between economic performance, turnover and employee experience!
Employee experience has an impact on:
A consultant who is satisfied with their working conditions, their assignments and their work environment is a consultant who stays with the company!
The employee satisfaction rate (also measured through the Employee Net Promoter Score, or eNPS) therefore directly affects the consultant retention rate, which in turn reduces the turnover rate as well as recruitment and training costs.
An engaged consultant is a consultant who is absent less often!
Consultant engagement rates and absenteeism rates are indicators that directly affect the company's productivity, margins and revenue.
A consultant who is engaged and happy at work is a consultant who performs better!
Employee satisfaction directly affects the quality of the work they produce and, ultimately, customer satisfaction and retention. Satisfied consultants lead to greater customer satisfaction and, as a result, more referrals and business opportunities that increase the growth rate of IT services firms.
A consultant who regularly takes training and is invested in their work is a consultant who can bring new, creative ideas to the company.
A corporate culture focused on a rewarding experience encourages innovation by stimulating consultants' creativity. Together, these factors contribute to higher revenue and better profitability for IT services firms.
For a long time, IT services firms managed to retain their talent thanks to attractive pay. But that is no longer enough! The talent shortage and consultants' volatility clearly show that the sector can no longer ignore employee experience in IT services firms if it wants to keep attracting talent. Salary is no longer everything: employee experience is now consultants' No. 1 criterion when looking for a job.
To offer consultants an attractive employee experience and reduce turnover, several levers can be used:
Today, it is more necessary than ever for the sector to adapt its management practices toward greater flexibility and resilience. This means, for example, adopting hands-on, close management that meets consultants' expectations in a personalized way and keeps listening to them.
In IT services firms, business managers often wear two hats: operational and day-to-day HR. Their role in reducing turnover is major, since they are consultants' main point of contact day to day! It is therefore essential to encourage them to adopt caring management, through constructive feedback, that is empathetic and motivating, so they can best support consultants in their goals, their development and their daily work.
Management is among consultants' top 5 criteria. (FedFinance)
In IT services firms, training serves two purposes: innovation and retention.
For consultants, having a personalized training plan that meets their expectations and needs opens up opportunities for career growth, promotion and greater responsibility, and strongly fuels their satisfaction and engagement with the company.
For the IT services firm, a strong training policy guarantees employees who are experts in their field, always up to date, and who excel on client assignments.
Training is therefore an employee experience lever that is a win-win for both sides! To develop its consultants' employability and help them build their skills, the company can offer online or in-person training on the most in-demand technologies and methods on the market, or offer opportunities for internal mobility or functional mobility between different clients or projects.
94% of employees would stay longer at a company that helped them develop their skills. (LinkedIn Workforce Learning)
"At HN SERVICES, our employees' skills are one of the key factors in our success. However, the world of digital technology is constantly evolving, and it is essential that we adapt. Investing in our employees' ongoing training so they can develop the skills needed to face tomorrow's challenges is therefore a necessity."
Ornella Gianessi, Recruitment Manager at HN SERVICES
Being able to thrive in one's job has become a major concern and a real driver of consultant retention.
From the work environment to work organization and employee benefits, there are many actions IT services firms can take to promote their consultants' well-being:
Measures like these directly affect IT services firms' employer brand and turnover rate, as well as their consultants' team spirit, engagement and motivation.
And to make sure you best meet your consultants' needs and wishes, it is highly recommended to ask for their ideas! As the people most concerned, they will be delighted to take part in the discussion.
Poor well-being at work among consultants is costly: nearly €13,500 per employee. (IBET)
In IT services firms, it is not always easy to build strong bonds between consultants. On client assignments for longer or shorter periods, they are regularly away from the company and their colleagues. Add to that the fact that communication mostly happens remotely, and team cohesion becomes very fragile. Yet a sense of belonging, informal connections and frequent interactions with other employees matter a great deal to employees today.
Team spirit is the No. 1 retention lever, ahead of salary. (Harvard Business Review)
To maintain this sense of belonging, it is essential for the company to regularly organize internal events, such as team-building activities, after-work gatherings or team lunches. This will only increase consultant engagement and retention.
From onboarding to offboarding, including maternity or paternity leave and vertical mobility, it is essential to support consultants through the key moments of their journey with the company. Good day-to-day support is of course vital, but if the major milestones of working life are poorly managed, consultants can quickly become disillusioned. It is often after a major change in their lives that they are most likely to leave if they do not feel properly supported: a failed onboarding, an unprepared return from leave, and so on.
On average, 30% of consultants leave their employer every year. (Consultor)
Consultant volatility is a reality, but it is not inevitable! Supporting consultants through key life moments remains one of the best ways to stand out in the market, enhance your employer brand and ultimately retain consultants over the long term.
Today, studies are unanimous on the subject: lack of recognition is one of the main reasons people resign.
In 2021, 44% of French employees had already resigned because of a lack of recognition at work. (Hays)
As the company's main value creators, employees now expect management to recognize and reward their performance and engagement.
To do this, small, easy wins are sometimes the best: giving employees regular, constructive good feedback, rewarding their efforts and successes with small gestures, a lunch invitation or a bonus system, involving them in decisions and company developments, organizing award or certificate ceremonies to celebrate successes, and so on.
Small gestures build great relationships and boost the feeling of being valued and motivation!
84% of employees believe that recognition at work is essential to their well-being. (OpinionWay)
The search for meaning at work has become a priority for many employees, especially since the health crisis and even more so among younger generations.
Meaning at work is a concern for 92% of employees. (Audencia)
Like team spirit or work-life balance, meaning at work is now a criterion that strongly influences employees' choice of company and assignments. To keep attracting talent and reducing turnover, IT services firms have no choice but to address the issue.
To do so, they need to build and convey a strong corporate culture based on shared values, assign stimulating projects aligned with consultants' aspirations, and share the results and impact of their work.
All of this will help foster employee engagement and alignment with the company's mission and vision.
"Day to day, we listen to each other, we talk and we know how to spend time together. We are deeply convinced that someone who is well supported, who loves the project they work on and the direction their career is taking, will be happier to get up in the morning to join their team."
Élise Finalteri, HR Captain at Eleven Labs
In the end, for consultants and IT services firms alike, employee experience is a win-win! IT services firms that understand the importance of employee experience and put measures in place, such as caring, attentive management or strong well-being at work and meaningful-work initiatives, stand every chance of attracting and retaining talent.
For consultants, it boosts their motivation, satisfaction, confidence, involvement and productivity. For IT services firms, it increases their attractiveness, reputation, retention and competitiveness.
Today, many HR tools, such as Wobee, have emerged and provide valuable day-to-day support to HR professionals, in particular to help them create and deliver the best possible employee experience.
In this sense, they make it possible to:
An HR platform gives consultants working on-site and remotely the same level of information and the same access to the company resources they might need (directories, document storage space, etc.).
Setting up an intranet in IT services firms is a perfect way to give consultants on client assignments access to company news.
When it is customized to reflect the company's identity (logo, colors, etc.), the intranet boosts consultants' engagement and sense of belonging and serves as a lever for passing on the company culture.
Every consultant is unique, and so is every journey within the company! To stand out and offer your consultants an engaging experience, nothing beats HR software that lets you create personalized, tailor-made journeys for each of them, based on their profile, needs, and so on.
HR's daily routine is filled with repetitive, time-consuming administrative tasks. An HR platform makes it quick to set up journeys, reminders and welcome emails, freeing HR from low-value tasks so they can focus on relationships and people.
63% of HR professionals spend at least half their time on administrative tasks. (Tissot: "HR day to day" barometer)
Besides saving time, automating processes helps avoid oversights and errors that hurt the employee experience.
A key lever for a good employee experience in IT services firms: thanks to HR tools, it is now easy to offer consultants a variety of certified online training courses, meeting their needs and expectations in terms of upskilling.
For follow-up and support, it is essential to ask consultants for feedback after each training course, by sending a questionnaire or an email to schedule a conversation.
By offering consultants a never-before-seen experience, with simplified administration, highly personalized interactions with the company and meticulous follow-up of their professional development, the company gives itself every chance to engage consultants from the start and begin the relationship on the right foot.
"At Finaxys, we chose Wobee! Thanks to its versatility and comprehensive features, the platform offers an integrated solution that effectively covers the essential aspects of improving the employee experience: smooth communication, effective collaboration, knowledge management, continuous training and guaranteed privacy and data security."
Yoann Lourteau, COO of Finaxys
Using digital tools to build an employee experience strategy is a smart move, provided they meet your objectives and suit your needs. To choose the right tools, you need to consider several criteria, including:
Choosing new internal tools is never simple: you need to know exactly which issues they must address, clearly define the expected objectives, compare what is on the market, and so on.
To choose well, HR consulting firms such as People Square can help by analyzing your needs, selecting suitable solutions, supporting their rollout and measuring their effectiveness.
Reducing turnover in IT services firms relies on a winning combination of practices and managerial involvement, corporate culture and digital tools. By putting people at the heart of their strategy, IT services firms optimize their economic performance while addressing their major business challenges of attracting and retaining talent, helping build a prosperous future for the company and its key players.
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