Event Recap
RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Staffing the Data Center
3 Oct 2018
The question of identifying and retaining qualified personnel dominated an hour-long Uptime Institute roundtable on data center staff hosted by Uptime Institute’s Senior Vice President, Management Services Fred Dickerman and Chief Editor Kevin Heslin on October 2, 2018. The problem, participants noted, is particularly acute in North America, where an aging workforce (average age approximately 60 according to participants) is increasing the urgency of addressing staffing.
At the same time, different organizations perceive the problem differently and are looking for different solutions. One organization, located in middle America, finds that there are fewer available candidates because a loss of local manufacturing has changed the area’s demographics. A New York City-based organization has also suffered from turnover, not because of an aging workforce but because a younger generation of workers changes employers after only a short time. A London-based organization worries about stability because the large number of data center facilities nearby means that it often must compete for employees on the basis of salary, quality of life, and potential advancement.
As one participant noted, a good employee can walk out the door of his data center and walk in the door of another data center across the street. They wondered what other companies included in their retention plans. Retention was most important to this last organization, as its current workforce averages about 40 years old, and they hope to retain the best of its new hires for years. A 451 Research HR executive pointed out that younger workers in all fields tend to want to change employers after as little as 3-4 years on the job.
The group also engaged in a discussion of staff size and makeup, including the potential for using vendor and third-party facility management organizations (FMOs) to decrease the pressure of finding, hiring and training qualified internal staff. These organizations were seen as able to offer more employee advancement; however, one roundtable participant noted that these advancements often resulted in the transfer of an experienced person to another facility. While all participants agreed that training and rigorous qualification was a vital part of the staffing process, there was also discussion of whether training requirements were a reason to outsource to an FMO or hire internal staff.
Fred noted that there are many business requirements and objectives which tended to drive other aspects of staffing. A requirement for 7x24 operations presence, for example, tended to increase costs, for obvious reasons, but because more business processes are 24x7, that cost is viewed as unavoidable. At the same time, businesses can reduce some staffing pressure by defining the number and qualifications of staff need on site and by improving their efficiency by managing hours of overtime and providing well-defined procedures. Unfortunately, he noted, organizations often fail at this task, and he told one anecdote about uncontrolled overtime to make his point.
Roundtable participants shared a number of tactics to make the best use of operations dollars, including information about vetting vendors and cross-training employees to increase flexibility in making work assignments.
At the same time, different organizations perceive the problem differently and are looking for different solutions. One organization, located in middle America, finds that there are fewer available candidates because a loss of local manufacturing has changed the area’s demographics. A New York City-based organization has also suffered from turnover, not because of an aging workforce but because a younger generation of workers changes employers after only a short time. A London-based organization worries about stability because the large number of data center facilities nearby means that it often must compete for employees on the basis of salary, quality of life, and potential advancement.
As one participant noted, a good employee can walk out the door of his data center and walk in the door of another data center across the street. They wondered what other companies included in their retention plans. Retention was most important to this last organization, as its current workforce averages about 40 years old, and they hope to retain the best of its new hires for years. A 451 Research HR executive pointed out that younger workers in all fields tend to want to change employers after as little as 3-4 years on the job.
The group also engaged in a discussion of staff size and makeup, including the potential for using vendor and third-party facility management organizations (FMOs) to decrease the pressure of finding, hiring and training qualified internal staff. These organizations were seen as able to offer more employee advancement; however, one roundtable participant noted that these advancements often resulted in the transfer of an experienced person to another facility. While all participants agreed that training and rigorous qualification was a vital part of the staffing process, there was also discussion of whether training requirements were a reason to outsource to an FMO or hire internal staff.
Fred noted that there are many business requirements and objectives which tended to drive other aspects of staffing. A requirement for 7x24 operations presence, for example, tended to increase costs, for obvious reasons, but because more business processes are 24x7, that cost is viewed as unavoidable. At the same time, businesses can reduce some staffing pressure by defining the number and qualifications of staff need on site and by improving their efficiency by managing hours of overtime and providing well-defined procedures. Unfortunately, he noted, organizations often fail at this task, and he told one anecdote about uncontrolled overtime to make his point.
Roundtable participants shared a number of tactics to make the best use of operations dollars, including information about vetting vendors and cross-training employees to increase flexibility in making work assignments.
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