What actionable strategies can organizations use to increase retention?

We have to figure out how to get the rest of the organization to react faster for IT, because the pandemic showed that, out of many areas in an organization, our area is probably the first and fastest that can take advantage of the flexibility of remote work. If our businesses survived the pandemic with people working remotely, clearly they can do their jobs. It's just that the organization isn't willing to acknowledge that the job can be done that way, because they don't know how to measure it, they've never done it before, and they fear others will complain and say, "How come my staff can't do this?" But it is job function-dependent. You chose this career; you happen to be at an advantage here. If you're a doctor or a surgeon, you don't get to work remotely. If you're a psychiatrist, you can work remotely every day of the week. It's just the professional you chose.

Recognition is one dimension that really helps motivate from within. We believe that IT is super important, but I think it's equally important to get the rest of the exec team to make major call-outs to the IT team in particular. Unfortunately, it's not often enough that you get the CEO of the organization applauding and calling out the IT organization for what they do, because the joke around operations is: if you keep 100% uptime, that's what you're supposed to do. Anything less, and you're in trouble. But truly calling out the team to recognize their work is multi-layered. While we can inspire within our teams, it's so much more powerful when you have your CEO, CFO, etc., saying, "Wow. This team rocks. This is incredible," and calling out the ways that IT is building talent from within.