3 ways to improve infocomm employee engagement

The existence of infocomm professionals tends to be remembered only when hardware breaks down or software fails to work. It is hardly surprising that they are not the most engaged employees in an organization.

Below are three ways to improve infocomm employee engagement.

1. Redesign the infocomm jobs

Include a fair mix of predictable and challenging roles in their job scopes. Otherwise, you will be "rewarding" your most competent infocomm people by making them "fight" the big "fires" all the time. Specify which staff will cover which duties under what circumstances. Not only does this ensure business continuity, the covering officer will also better appreciate the value added by their colleague.

For example, if you have two staff members and two projects, instead of assigning them a project each, split the tasks of the two projects so that both staff members will participate in both projects. One codes the software, the other tests it.

2. Explain the business rationale to the infocomm team

Infocomm teams tend to be involved too early or too late in projects. Brief them on the business objectives, answer the questions they have that affect their decisions, and listen to the solutions they propose. What they think of may be simpler than what you had in mind, and may even be more flexible in the longer run, because they approach it with the infocomm architecture and design in mind.

3. Assure the infocomm people that their human discretion matters

Infocomm employees live in constant fear of being made redundant through automation, outsourcing, and offshoring. Assure them that automating predictable tasks enables them to provide higher value by exercising their discretion when exceptions happen. Prompt them to share their experience, which can be used to manage the performance of the outsourced and offshore teams.