Compensating for poor compensation

I've been blogging about how organizations pay budget for and compensate IT staff. The bottom line is that many of the common ways that organizations decide on IT compensation lead to pay scales that are not attractive to quality IT staff, even those truly committed to non-profit work.

The problem is that sometimes you really, really cannot pay an attractive salary. What do you do then? Throwing up your hands is not an option. So, for starters, get your salary as high as you can.

That is only a starting point. What you need to do is to create other incentives for quality people to come to you. There are things that can be relatively low cost for you, but of high value for your staff. And some things are not even about money but quality of life and life balance.

Here are some things that can make a real difference - based on personal experience and observation. Consider "job sharing" - an arrangement where two people take on the responsibilities of one position. This may or may not save you money, but it may attract people who have the skills and personality you need, who want or need to work part time. Do what you can to allow for flexible work schedules. It may mean a real change in work style, but it can make all the difference to your staff. The same is true of allowing staff, especially IT staff to work remotely. And, if you provide the tools to make this practical, you may just "buy" the loyalty of highly skilled staff. The side benefit of creating that kind of infrastructure, and something that may help you "sell" it to your Board and funders, is that you will have a far more flexible and resilient infrastructure. That means that if something goes wrong at your site, or you have to deal with issues such a flue pandemic which will keep large numbers of people away from work, you will be more likely to keep at least some semblance of your operation going.

I'm sure there are more ideas. The point is that you need to be creative in finding things that are of real value to people - things that can really outweigh the negatives of a poor pay scale.