Editor's note: As part of our ongoing series on IT talent, we've been asking Enterprisers what they're doing to retain talented IT employees. Here's what Arbella Insurance CIO Paul Brady had to say:
I’ve stated on many occasions that as you progress through your career, your manager should be working with you to understand where you want to go and help you develop the skills and training to get you there. At the start of your career, your manager has 90 percent of that responsibility, but as you move to mid-level and senior-level roles, you need to own more and more of your development.
That’s why I like the phrase, “Train them well enough that they can leave you, but treat them well enough that they won’t.”
I’ve got 100 percent of my IT organization Six Sigma Yellow Belt-certified, which has value in the industry, and I taught them this way so they would learn and have new, marketable skills. But as a company we also treat them right, and as a result we haven’t had any trouble retaining and hiring top talent.
Paul’s responsibilities at Arbella span infrastructure, application development and IT core services. Paul previously spent 10+ years at Liberty Mutual where he was the Senior Director of IT.
