The talent shortage is hitting organisations hard, particularly when it comes to IT experts, and with the festive season knocking at the door, people leaders are now faced with the potential of larger staffing gaps as team members take leave.
With personnel out of the business for any period, it can have a major impact on how the business meets customer SLAs, delivers projects, adheres to timeframes, maintains day-to-day operations, and even how it responds to mission critical emergency situations.
So how can organisation’s prepare for the holiday period and ensure it’s ‘business as usual’ when it comes to delivery IT services? Based on our experience, here are five key steps we believe organisations should take.
1. Get prepared as early as possible
While early preparation may seem an obvious priority, it’s more common than not for organisations to leave their holiday staffing to the last minute.
To avoid IT staffing gaps, it’s important for businesses to determine their requirements well in advance. Data analysis can also be used to predict future demand, to ensure your organisation has the appropriate combination of IT staff on-site to respond.
2. Fill last minute gaps
Even though it pays to be as organised as possible with regards to your IT staffing, most organisations will still encounter last-minute gaps over holiday periods.
One way organisations are filling the gaps is with short or long term contractors, or as we like to call it, a contingent workforce. Organisations are partnering with IT recruitment providers to augment their staff with on-site, highly skilled IT experts for any timeframe required – whether it’s for one day, or several weeks to months.
3. Choose an IT-specific recruiter
When it comes to sourcing talent, you need to know that the IT experts you are employing over the holiday period can hit the ground running and are technically competent in a broad range of areas. Leveraging a recruitment provider that has a pool of pre-vetted, ready-talent that ranges from help-desk support, all the way to senior network engineers and architects, can ensure that no matter what gap you have, it can be filled easily, and quickly.
4. Put firm controls in place
Many organisations don’t have the necessary controls, strategies or procedures in place to effectively utilise external staff. Selecting the right recruitment provider can have many benefits and one is that they can work with you to put a robust plan in place, and ensure any process or legal concerns are completely covered off, and risks are mitigated.
5. React as circumstances change
Over the holiday period, it’s likely that staffing levels will fluctuate – often at the last moment. Rather than just accepting this to be the case, be prepared to engage contractors at the last minute – to maintain all-important business continuity.
Can we help you over this holiday period?
At AC3, we specialise in helping businesses maintain business continuity at all times, through our contingent workforce solution. As well as offering our consulting and technology expertise, we also offer a team of highly skilled IT professionals who are available to work on-site, as contractors, over the busy holiday period.
As well as our depth of expertise, one of AC3’s key differentiators is the level of flexibility we offer. Organisations can request any number of employees, and can also specify any timeframe that they require – whether it’s a one day, or several months.
We also have the technical expertise to ensure the people we send have the exact skills that the job requires, before they arrive on-site. Also, every contractor we send out has been thoroughly vetted by our experts, and comes with the complete backing of AC3 and our service desk, so they’re never working in isolation.
You also receive a dedicated point of contact, and we can provide a rapid response to any staffing requirements, regardless of when the request is made.
You can find out more about our talent management solutions here.
We’d love to chat to see how we can help you! You can reach us at 02 9199 0999 or talentmanagement@ac3.com.au.