Let's discuss the human resources management and performance improvement of the IT departments in large state-owned enterprises.
First, we need to establish a concept: the work of the IT department must be subordinate to the enterprise strategy.
A large state-owned enterprise usually has a long history of development. In the tide of reform, it has struggled for survival and after long-term development, it generally understands its near-term five to ten-year development strategy and plan.
As a department of a large state-owned enterprise, the IT department's development plan must comply with the overall strategy and medium-to-long-term plan of the entire enterprise. This is the "basic law" of human resources management in the IT department.
The human resources management of the IT department starts with the department's human resources planning. Once the enterprise strategy is determined, all work, all departments, all employees, and all resource allocations within the entire enterprise must serve the strategic objectives. The strategy is the process of achieving the enterprise's goals. The enterprise strategy process includes: defining the theme - setting objectives - distinguishing priorities - organizing the structure - obtaining indicators - forming plans.
In the third step of "organizing the structure," the company's organizational structure is actually determined, and at the same time, the functional positioning of the IT department within a large enterprise is also established. Specifically, in the current stage, is the key function of the IT department to ensure the operation of the enterprise's OA system, or to achieve the overall ERP go-live for the entire group as soon as possible, or to ensure seamless integration between the financial system and production, sales, and inventory systems? These questions will become the focus of work in each stage.
Secondly, after completing the human resources planning of the IT department, we need to proceed with building the department's human resources management system from the following aspects:
Standard recruitment, enhanced training, scientific evaluation, effective incentives, and career development planning for employees, allowing employees to grow together with the IT department and the enterprise.
During the recruitment process, fairness and impartiality principles should be ensured. Through market competition, high-quality talent needed for the continuous growth of the IT department can be obtained at a relatively reasonable cost. Before external public recruitment, internal competitions can be held to select talent internally, which is a low-cost, high-efficiency method that is easily overlooked for discovering talent.
The rapid development of IT technology leads to significantly higher learning and training costs for IT professionals compared to other departments. This highlights the importance of training in the human resources management process of the IT department. The head of the IT department must ensure necessary professional training for their staff while enhancing their own learning. This is akin to updating soldiers' old rifles with new weapons, greatly improving the combat effectiveness of the IT "army."
Scientific evaluation is the balance that reflects an employee's creative ability. How to prevent talented employees in the IT department from being underappreciated is a skill that a good supervisor needs to master, supported by a set of scientific evaluation indicators. For positions with different work content such as system design, program development, informatization planning, system maintenance, technical support, website construction, etc., corresponding key performance indicators (KPIs) need to be designed to reflect the employee's work performance.
It is well-known that if employees can receive the company's rewards or returns in the same month after making contributions to the company, this incentive effect is optimal. This is especially true in the IT industry where talent turnover is extremely high. Therefore, our IT department's incentive system also needs to reflect stronger real-time performance.
Since the growth rate of IT talent is very fast, an IT professional may find after 1-2 years that the company's demand for IT technology does not keep up with his learning speed or that his interests do not align with the daily work of his position. For example, after a large enterprise successfully launches a large ERP system, the IT department may only need to perform some routine maintenance work, while more specialized upgrade and database maintenance work are outsourced to companies like IBM and Oracle according to commercial contracts. An IT professional who is interested in program development might then be less willing to continue working in the company. In such cases, the IT department should respect the employee's personal growth plan and work with the employee early on to understand their growth direction and interests, combining them with actual work as much as possible, jointly formulating a personal career development plan, and preparing relevant talent reserves early.
In fact, each topic such as standard recruitment, enhanced training, scientific evaluation, effective incentives, and career development planning for employees is a separate subject. For example, in establishing scientific evaluations, designing KPIs suitable for the IT department requires incorporating the thinking of the balanced scorecard to optimally reflect finance, customers, internal operations, and learning growth. These all require detailed research. Additionally, regarding the evaluation cycle, should monthly evaluations be used at different stages, or quarterly or annual evaluations? Regarding incentive methods, how can they truly reflect internal fairness, external fairness, and employee self-fairness? All these questions need to be analyzed based on specific situations.
In summary, the human resources management of the IT department should comply with the overall strategic development needs of the entire enterprise, doing a good job of the department's human resources planning and short-term human resources work planning, proceeding with specific work in steps according to the plan. Doing well in the foundational work of human resources management, including staffing and position setting, compiling and timely revising job descriptions, and formulating scientific performance evaluation indicators, we need to use a scientific system to stimulate employees' enthusiasm for work, improve the work performance of the IT department, and ensure the smooth development of employees' personal careers.