Building and Nurturing Your Tech Team

In today's fast-paced tech world, every team needs its heroes to save the day, boost productivity, and unleash innovation. But to succeed in the ever-changing tech landscape, it's crucial to start with foundations for a high-performing team.

Building Your Tech Team – Heroes Assemble

We want to recruit top talent for our dream team, and that means looking globally and building remote, distributed teams.  When starting from scratch it is a good idea to hire experienced developers, designers or proven tech leaders, who will be ideal for mentoring, setting best practices and demonstrating proof of concept. But don't overlook the power of internal recruitment, showing your people they are valued, and that employee experience matters.

Developing talent from within your organization offers several advantages. It boosts morale, provides opportunities for internal progression, and equips employees with the digital skills required for the future workforce. Look beyond the IT department and consider recruiting talent from various business areas, such as technology enthusiasts, business process experts or analysts, data analysts, or individuals with an aptitude for software and systems thinking. Work closely with your HR and Talent specialists to identify potential candidates for your tech team or develop existing team members into new roles.

Tech teams don’t just need technical people though, we need marketing and communication specialists, we need education and enablement professionals, we need customer success and forward-thinking product managers.  There is more than one way to get into working in tech, without learning how to code.  (More articles to come on this!)

Career Planning – Creating Future Tech Titans

To ensure the growth of skills and careers within your tech team, provide training, mentoring, and support. Make personal and professional development a top priority, encouraging innovative thinking and new ways of working.

Give your team members the opportunity to progress and acquire new skills. For example, a Software Developer can move into a Lead Architect role with proper support, or an Analyst may aspire to become a Product Manager. By investing in their development, you not only enhance their capabilities but also improve the overall employee experience and staff retention.

Utilise a skills matrix and development plan to encourage individual and team growth.  In addition to internal mentoring and training, we should also give team members the opportunity to gain professional accreditation for their skills, join professional membership bodies and attend networking events.  Show the team you value their contributions by investing in them.

Succession Planning – Saving the day

A well-defined succession planning framework can safeguard the future of your team. HR plays a critical role in supporting succession planning by creating a talent pipeline of future heroes capable of filling key positions as the team evolves. Work with HR to establish policies and implement a suggested succession planning model that aligns with your organisation's goals and needs.

Make training or job shadowing available to those aspiring to join your tech team. Establish a citizen developer, super user or digital champion program to nurture future talent and advocate for the benefits of the technology you’re innovating. Another strategy is to use graduate schemes, coaching or apprentice programs as a place to identify and develop your future talent.

Talent Retention and Development – Harness Super Powers

To keep your team from going to the dark side, by which I mean leaving your organisation, you've got to equip them with the tools, employee experience and support they need. Here are some strategies to consider to nurture top performing talent:

• Offer a clear career path: Communicate growth and development opportunities within the team, motivating employees to stay and enhance their skills.
• Provide an excellent employee experience: Empower the team to work when and where they feel most productive with flexible and remote working. Have a focus on mental health and wellbeing and build a team based on trust, connection and shared purpose.
• Provide stability and security: Ensure job security and establish clear expectations, making employees confident in their roles and the organisation's commitment to tech initiatives.
• Support professional development: Foster a culture that encourages continuous learning and growth. Give team members dedicated time for professional development of their choosing, and crucially, insist they share their insights and learning with the team.
• Upskill for the future of work: Use mentoring and training to upskill the team with digital skills for the future.  Invest in automation, the use of AI, lean or agile methodologies or the latest thinking in zero based design, for example. Stay abreast of emerging technology trends and tools to try new things with your team.
• Encourage innovation: Cultivate a creative and experimental environment where team members are encouraged to think outside the box and contribute new ideas. A safe space is needed for trying, failing and succeeding.
• Promote diversity and inclusion: Actively recruit and develop team members from diverse backgrounds to highlight the importance of different perspectives and ideas.
• Implement a recognition and rewards program: Celebrate accomplishments through performance-based incentives, recognising the contributions of team members. This can involve pubic recognition, but it also means money – stay competitive to keep your team on your side.
• Provide regular feedback: Offer valuable feedback to help individuals gauge their performance, feel proud of their achievements or understand what could help to make them smash it even more the next time. Measure success criteria visibly and transparently, communicating opportunities for improvement as well as how the team are contributing to the goals of the organisation.
• Foster autonomy: Empower employees by giving them the freedom to make decisions and take ownership of their work, increasing engagement and productivity. Remove barriers to progress such as that bottleneck of manager approval or the need to be consulted in all decisions. Keep managers informed but we should only need their help when we have obstacles for them to remove or to give us clarity on direction.
• Set the right leadership culture: A team of expert tech professionals need inspirational leadership that serves their needs.  
• Celebrate successes: When team members achieve their goals, acknowledge and celebrate their accomplishments publicly. This reinforces their value and strengthens the sense of belonging within the team.

In the dynamic and transformative world of tech, the heart and soul of success lie within a skilled and nurtured team. Embrace the potential of internal recruitment, fostering growth and digital skills within your organisation. Let career planning be the guiding light, empowering team members to conquer new challenges and elevate their expertise. Cultivate a culture of learning, experimentation, and diversity while celebrating accomplishments and innovative thinking. With a united and thriving team, the possibilities are limitless, and the tech revolution will continue to develop our people as well as strengthen our organisations for the future. Onward and upward, heroes of tech!

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