Finders keepers

Today, thanks to some innovative thinking on roles and pay, it is zero and Dryden estimates that the registered social landlord has saved £42,000 a year that it would have spent recruiting and training new IT staff.

This is no mean feat, given that IT staff are notorious for aligning themselves with their profession rather than the sector in which their employer operates. Like magpies, they are attracted to the glitter of cold hard cash and state-of-the-art technology. And the public sector hasn't been able to compete with private sector employers: staff earn between 11% and 40% less than their private sector counterparts, and regulations forbid registered social landlords from paying bonuses. Research in 2002 by recruitment company Hays Personnel found that whereas a senior IT support worker could earn £25,570 a year in the private sector, their public sector equivalent would be paid £21,850. In RSLs, this falls to just £18,265.

But there are signs that this is changing. With private sector salaries falling and redundancies common, the government is investing heavily in IT, including a £6bn spend on taking government services on-line. "Two or three years ago, there was a little bit of a stigma attached to the public sector – it was seen as second-rate and second-class," says Dryden. "But it's now seen as equal,

or even an employer of choice. There are leading-edge projects, career stability and better benefits, like pensions."

At Parity, a recruitment agency that specialises in IT, government operations director Kevin Riley has also noticed the change. "E-government has helped bring a bit of equilibrium to the market. The public sector is no longer seen as a backwards step on your CV," he says, adding that IT staff who would previously have turned their noses up at public services are now only too happy to be where the investment is.

This means it is a great time for RSLs and local authorities to make sure the wider pool of talent they attract decides to stay.

Dryden's drive to stop English Churches from haemorrhaging staff began with six months of study for his MBA dissertation on why IT staff retention was such a problem for the social housing sector.

He found that IT staff in housing associations tended to be young, at the beginning of their career, and stayed an average of just three years, never to return. He surveyed IT departments in RSLs managing more than 5000 homes and got 66 responses. From this he found that the greatest causes of dissatisfaction among staff were a lack of career progression and training opportunities, poor pay and lack of bonuses.

Recognition and rewards
To stem the flow of staff from his department, he introduced a more structured career path, complete with incremental pay rises. "The main thing is to motivate them by rewarding skills and experience," he explains. "Previously, an analyst programmer who had just joined would be the same grade as the person who was training them, who'd been there for 10 years. Now, for each job grade, we have three different levels, and there are 15 job descriptions instead of six."

For example, an IT worker starting out at English Churches today may begin as a trainee analyst programmer, and receive a promotion to analyst programmer after two or three years. Then, when they are ready to take on more responsibilities, difficult projects or training junior staff, the role of senior analyst programmer awaits. There's also a progression around the department, with senior helpdesk staff on a slightly lower grade than a junior infrastructure and operations technician. Of course, each promotion comes with that all-important salary rise.

Dryden's reforms have also had an impact on the rest of the organisation, with the introduction of small salary increases after 18 month blocks of service to reward experience. "That took many, many hours of negotiation," admits Dryden.

He's pleased with the results of the restructuring and would recommend other public service employers look at the rewards they offer their staff. Dryden admits that it's still early days, but he's confident that even though staff turnover may rise above zero, it will remain relatively low. "Much as I'd like to take the credit, I think a stable team breeds a stable team. But we've now got a structure that will make it easier to keep people with us for much longer.

"It's all about creating the belief that they can progress within the organisation."