Motivating IT Employees -- Part 1

What motivates IT people? To answer this question, Forrester first identified 12 core factors that influence motivation, and then we surveyed 129 IT leaders to determine the impact of each factor. What did we find? All ages were highly motivated by interesting work and, to a lesser extent, autonomy. Those younger than 45 years old added career development and work/life balance to the two factors above, while those over 45 added job security and base compensation. So what should CIOs do? Consider how different groups are motivated by different mixtures of incentives. However, don't overpromise on benefits without setting up the supporting structure for those benefits. Use financial incentives as a baseline to motivate groups of people, and use more flexible motivators such as autonomy to incent individuals in specific directions.