In line with its innovation in all spheres of technology services and solutions provision, Britehouse Digital is breaking the mould of traditional IT recruitment practices that have always been distorted by IT skills shortages.
"Instead of recycling the same talent over and over again from one company to another, as highly skilled people quite legitimately follow the jobs that are either best paid or enable them to learn new skills, we are focusing on talent retention as the key to ensuring that we retain our competitive edge," says Britehouse Digital's Acquisition Specialist, Candice McCumskey.
"In order to achieve this, we are emphasising two areas: skills development and our own industry leadership as a provider of solutions. At first glance, they appear to be different disciplines but, in fact, they reinforce each other.
"By ensuring that we remain a trusted advisor to our customers and, therefore, that we are able to guide them in the astute application of ever evolving technologies, we remain the kind of organisation that software developers and IT specialists want to work for. Technology specialists thrive on frontiers. They want to do pioneering work.
"Britehouse Digital is superbly positioned to offer them such opportunities because we see it as our job to understand the digital future and have the strategic and tactical abilities to help our customers exploit it. It doesn't get more pioneering than that.
"However, the further out in front of the pack one goes, the fewer people there are who have the skills needed to tame the frontier. So, while we have the necessary human networks in place to identify and stay in contact with talent that is available, we have chosen not to be reliant on external supply over the long term.
"We are investing in finding people with potential in the areas in which we want to lead the industry and then training them with a specific emphasis on equipping them for succession roles in the company.
"This way, we ensure a tight fit with the Britehouse culture of innovation in service of our customers while building a talent pool that cannot be matched. We're creating a Britehouse innovation continuum that will, in turn, be enormously attractive to people who want to be part of the best team out there.
"It's a powerful poaching-resistant strategy."
Britehouse Digital, which includes Compubrand, Firestring, Britehouse Mobility, and the former 3fifteen, already has a good talent retention track record. Some of its current software developers and project leaders have been with the company for 15 years. Most have been there for at least five years.
In addition, many of those who have left the company return after a few years of acquiring new skills.
"We always welcome good people back because they bring with them enriched experience and a broader view of technology in general," McCumskey says.
"By the same token, the people who have stayed with us have benefited from ongoing study that we have funded and from involvement in a broad spectrum of projects for almost all of South Africa's blue chip companies. Their depth of experience gives our customers immense comfort and confidence.
"They also provide the continuity that is so essential to ensuring that enterprise systems evolve intelligently and purposefully in order to best serve the customer's business strategy. It's what enables us to build long-term relationships with our customers and why customers who have used us for a one-off project come back to us for new projects.
"And, because Britehouse evolves with technology - and often ahead of it, the people who stay with us inevitably become leading practitioners of the solutions that give our customers a competitive edge.
"So, we already have in place an extremely resilient foundation for our new emphasis on retention through skills development and industry leadership. All we're really doing now is converting talent retention into a differentiator."
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