That still left a 55% majority of respondents who wanted to stay in technology, and 85.5% of the sample who said they had enjoyed working in the industry.
While the desire to leave IT could suggest that CIOs are looking for fresh challenges rather than fleeing the industry, a separate study by UK recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash points toward a more worrying scenario. Its October study of 650 UK CIOs uncovered a devaluing of IT’s role in the company and high numbers of staff looking to move jobs.
While six out of 10 CIOs believed the CIO role was growing in strategic stature in the company, this was a 15% drop compared with a similar survey a year earlier. This view was backed up by half the CFOs questioned in the study for whom IT was merely support function with no place on the board. Given its fall from power, it was no surprise that a quarter of the IT chiefs wanted to leave their current for a role where they were more involved in business strategy.
IT is a concern that the strategic influence of CIOs has eroded in recent years, but even more worrying is the restlessness this creates in the sector, said John Whiting, managing director, for the UK IT business at Harvey Nash, pointing out a 15% increase in technology leaders staying in their jobs for less than a year.
Some 44% of the CBR respondents thought that the short tenure of CIOs had an adverse effect on companies’ ability to achieve their strategies and objectives.
Whiting blamed the decline in CIOs’ standing on a failure to innovate. Almost two-thirds of businesses said they did not have a structured approach to IT innovation, and three-quarters reported only reasonable or limited success from their projects.
