Create an Effective SEO Keyword Strategy
Update your on-page SEO strategy with competitively relevant keywords.

Analyst Perspective

Most marketers fail in their SEO efforts because they focus on creating content for computers, not people.

Leading search engine optimization methods focus on creating and posting relevant keyword-rich content, not just increasing page rank. Content and keywords should move a buyer along their journey, close a sale, and develop long-term relationships. Unfortunately, many SEO specialists focus on computers, not the buyer. What's even more concerning is that up to 70% of SaaS businesses have already been impacted by outdated and inefficient SEO techniques. Poor strategies often focus on ballooning SEO metrics in the short-term instead of building the company's long-term PageRank.

Best-in-class digital marketers stop chasing the short-term highs and focus on long-term growth. This starts with developing a competitive keyword strategy and updating website content with the new keywords.

SEO is a large topic, so we have broken the strategy into small, easy-to-implement steps, taking the guesswork out of how to use the data from SEO tools and giving CMOs a solid path to increase their SEO results.

Terra Higginson
Marketing Research Director
SoftwareReviews

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Digital marketers working with an outdated or bad SEO strategy often see:

• Declining keyword ranking and traffic
• Poor keyword strategy
• On-page errors

Search algorithms change all the time, which means that the strategy is often sitting on the sifting sands of technology, making SEO strategies quickly outdated.

Common Obstacles

Digital marketers are responsible for developing and implementing a competitive SEO strategy but increasingly encounter the following obstacles:

• SEO practitioners that focus on gaming the system
• Ever-changing SEO technology
• Lack of understanding of the best SEO techniques
• SEO techniques focus on the needs of computers, not people
• Lack of continued investment

SoftwareReviews' Approach

Using the SoftwareReviews methodology, digital marketers are able to break up their SEO project and data into bite-sized, actionable steps that focus on long-term improvement. Our methodology includes:

• Competitive keyword research and identification of opportunities
• On-page keyword strategy

Our methodology will take a focused step-by-step strategy in a series of phases that will increase PageRank and competitive positioning.

SoftwareReviews' SEO Methodology

In this blueprint, we will cover:

Good SEO vs. Poor SEO Techniques

The difference between good and bad SEO techniques.

Companies With Great SEO…

Keyword Strategy

• Have identified a keyword strategy that carves out targets within the white space available between themselves and the competition.

Error-Free Site

• Have error-free sites without duplicate content. Their URLs and redirects are all updated. Their site is responsive, and every page loads in under two seconds.

Pillar & Content Clusters

• Employ a pillar and content cluster strategy to help move the buyer through their journey.

Authentic Off-Page Strategy

• Build an authentic backlink strategy that incorporates the right information on the right sites to move the buyer through their journey.

SEO Terms Defined

A glossary to define common Phase 1 SEO terms.

Search Volume: this measures the number of times a keyword is searched for in a certain time period. Target keywords with a volume of between 100-100,000. A search volume greater than 100,000 will be increasingly difficult to rank (A Beginner's Guide to Keyword Search Volume, 2022, Semrush).

Keyword Difficulty: the metric that quantifies how difficult it will be to rank for a certain keyword. The keyword difficulty percentage includes the number of competitors attempting to rank for the same keyword, the quality of their content, the search intent, backlinks, and domain authority (Keyword Difficulty: What Is It and Why Is It Important? 2022, Semrush).

Intent: this metric focuses on the intent of the user's search. All search intent is categorized into Informational, Commercial, Navigational, and Transactional (What Is Search Intent? A Complete Guide, 2022, Semrush).

On-Page SEO: refers to the practice of search engine optimizing elements of your site such as title tags, internal links, HTML code, URL optimization, on-page content, images, and user experience.

Off-Page SEO: refers to the practice of optimizing brand awareness (What Is Off-Page SEO? A Comprehensive Guide, 2022, Semrush).

H1: HTML code that tells a search engine the title of the page (neilpatel.com).

SEO Tool: A subscription-based all-in-one search engine optimization MarTech tool.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful… We believe Search should deliver the most relevant and reliable information available.
– An excerpt from Google's mission statement

Your Challenge

Google makes over 4.5k algorithm changes per year1, directly impacting digital marketing search engine optimization efforts.

Digital marketers with SEO problems will often see the following issues:

• Keyword ranking – A decline in keyword ranking is alarming and results in decreased PageRank.
• Bounce rate – Attracting the wrong audience to your site will increase the bounce rate because the H1 doesn't resonate with your audience.
• Outdated keywords – Many companies are operating on a poor keyword strategy, or even worse, no keyword strategy. In addition, many marketers haven't updated their strategy to include pillar and cluster content.
• Errors – Neglected sites often have a large number of errors.
• Bad backlinks – Neglected sites often have a large number of toxic backlinks.

The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of the search results.
– Huffington Post

Common Obstacles

Digital marketers are responsible for developing and executing a competitive SEO strategy but increasingly encounter the following obstacles:

• Inefficient and ineffective SEO practitioners.
• Changing SEO technology and search engine algorithms.
• Lack of understanding of the best-in-class SEO techniques.
• Lack of a sustainable plan to manage the strategy and invest in SEO.

SEO is a helpful activity when it's applied to people-first content. However, content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying.
– Google Search Central Blog

Benefits of Proper SEO

A good SEO keyword strategy will create long-term, sustainable SEO growth:

• Write content for people, not algorithms – Good SEO prioritizes the needs of humans over the needs of computers, being ever thoughtful of the meaning of content and keywords.
• Content that aligns with intent – Content and keyword intent will align with the buyer journey to help move prospects through the funnel.
• Competitive keyword strategy – Find keyword white space for your brand. Keywords will be selected to optimize your ranking among competition with reasonable and sustainable targets.
• Actionable and impactful fixes – By following the SoftwareReviews phases of SEO, you will be able to take a very large task and divide it into conquerable actions. Small improvements everyday lead to very large improvements over time.

Digital Marketing SEO Stats

61%
61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success.
Source: Safari Digital

437%
Updating an existing title tag with an SEO optimised one can increase page clicks by more than 437%.
Source: Safari Digital

Good SEO Aligns With Search Intent

What type of content is the user searching for? Align your keyword to the logical search objective.

Informational

This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to inform or educate themselves on a specific topic.

Commercial

This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to do research before making a purchase.

Transactional

This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to purchase something.

Navigational

This term categorizes search intent for when a user wants to find a specific page.

SoftwareReviews' Methodology toCreate an Effective SEO Strategy

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 1 to 2 months.

SoftwareReviews offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Insight Summary

People-First Content

Best-in-class SEO practitioners focus on people-first content, not computer-first content. Search engine algorithms continue to focus on how to rank better content first, and a strategy that moves your buyers through the funnel in a logical and cohesive way will beat any SEO trick over the long run.

Find White Space

A good SEO strategy uses competitive research to carve out white space and give them a competitive edge in an increasingly difficult ranking algorithm. An understanding of the ideal client profile and the needs of their buyer persona(s) sit as a pre-step to any good SEO strategy.

Optimize On-Page Keywords

By optimizing the on-page strategy with competitively relevant keywords that target your ideal client profile, marketers are able to take an easy first step at improving the SEO content strategy.

Understand the Strategy

If you don't understand the strategy of your SEO practitioner, you are in trouble. Marketers need to work hand in hand with their SEO specialists to quickly uncover gaps, create a strategy that aligns with the buyer persona(s), and execute the changes.

Quality Trumps Quantity

The quality of the prospect that your SEO efforts bring to your site is more important than the number of people brought to your site.

Stop Here and Ask Yourself:

• Do I have an updated (completed within the last two years) buyer persona and journey?
• Do I know who the ICP (ideal client profile) is for my product or company?

If not, stop here, and we can help you define your buyer persona and journey, as well as your ideal client profile before moving forward with SEO Phase 1.

The Steps to SEO Phase 1

The Keyword Strategy

1. Current Keywords
   • Identify the keywords your SEO strategy is currently targeting.
2. Competitive Analysis
   • Research the keywords of competitor(s). Identify keyword whitespace.
3. New Target Keywords
   • Identify and rank keywords that will result in more quality leads and less competition.
4. Product & Service Pages
   • Identify your current product and service pages. These pages represent the easiest content to update on your site.
5. Individual Page Update
   • Develop an SEO strategy for each of your product and service pages, include primary target keyword, H1, and title tags, as well as keyword-rich description.

Resources Needed for Search Engine Optimization

Consider the working skills required for search engine optimization.

Required Skills/Knowledge

• SEO
• Web development
• Competitive analysis
• Content creation
• Understanding of buyer persona and journey
• Digital marketing

Suggested Titles

• SEO Analyst
• Competitive Intelligence Analyst
• Content Marketing Manager
• Website Developer
• Digital Marketing Manager

Digital Marketing Software

• CMS that allows you to easily access and update your content

SEO Software

• SEO tool

Step 1: Current Keywords

Use this sheet to record your current keyword research.

Use your SEO tool to research keywords and find the following:
Use a quality tool like SEMRush to obtain SEO data.

1. Keyword difficulty
2. Search volume
3. Search intent

Step 2: Competitive Analysis

Use this sheet to guide the research on your competitors' keywords.

Use your SEO tool to find the following:

1. Top organic keywords
2. Ranking of keywords
3. Domain authority and trust
4. Position changes

Step 3: New Target Keywords

Use this sheet to record target keywords that have a good volume but are less competitive. The new target keywords should align with your buyer persona and their journey.

Use your SEO tool to research keywords and find the following:
Use a quality tool like SEMRush to obtain SEO data.

1. Keyword difficulty
2. Search volume
3. Search intent

Step 4: Product & Service Pages

Duplicate this page so that you have a separate page for each URL from Step 4

Use this sheet to identify your current product and service pages.

Use your SEO tool to find the following:

1. Current rank
2. Current keywords

Step 5: Individual Page Strategy

Develop a keyword strategy for each of your product and service pages. Use a fresh page for each URL.

Date last optimized:
mm/dd/yyyy

Bibliography

Council, Y. "Council Post: The Rundown On Black Hat SEO Techniques And Why You Should Avoid Them." Forbes, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

"Our approach – How Google Search works." Google Search. Accessed September 2022.

"The Best Place to Hide a Dead Body is Page Two of Google." HuffPost, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

Patel, Neil. "How to Create the Perfect H1 Tag for SEO." neilpatel.com. Accessed September 2022.

Schwartz, B. "Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond." Search Engine Land, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

Schwartz, B. "Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond." Search Engine Land, 2022. Accessed September 2022.

Tell Your Story With Data Visualization

Build trust with your stakeholders.

Analyst Perspective

Build trust with your stakeholders.

Data visualization refers to graphical representations of data which help an audience understand. Without good storytelling, however, these representations can distract an audience with enormous amounts of data or even lead them to incorrect conclusions.

Good storytelling with data visualization involves identifying the business problem, exploring potential drivers, formulating a hypothesis, and creating meaningful narratives and powerful visuals that resonate with all audiences and ultimately lead to clear actionable insights.

Follow Info-Tech's step-by-step approach to address the business bias of tacit experience over data facts, improve analysts' effectiveness and support better decision making.

Ibrahim Abdel-Kader
Research Analyst,
Data, Analytics, and Enterprise Architecture

Nikitha Patel
Research Specialist,
Data, Analytics, and Enterprise Architecture

Ruyi Sun
Research Specialist,
Data, Analytics, and Enterprise Architecture

Our understanding of the problem

This research is designed for

• Business analysts, data analysts, or their equivalent who (in either a centralized or federated operating model) look to solve challenging business problems more effectively and improve communication with audiences by demonstrating significant insights through visual data storytelling.

This research will also assist

• A CIO or business unit (BU) leader looking to improve reporting and analytics, reduce time to information, and embrace decision making.

This research will help you

• Identify the business problem and root causes that you are looking to address for key stakeholders.
• Improve business decision making through effective data storytelling.
• Focus on insight generation rather than report production.
• Apply design thinking principles to support the collection of different perspectives.

This research will help them

• Understand the report quickly and efficiently, regardless of their data literacy level.
• Grasp the current situation of data within the organization.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight
As organizations strive to become more data-driven, good storytelling with data visualization supports growing corporate data literacy and helps analysts provide insights that improve organizational decision-making and value-driving processes, which ultimately boosts business performance.

Glossary

• Data: Facts or figures, especially those stored in a computer, that can be used for calculating, reasoning, or planning. When data is processed, organized, structured, or presented in a given context to make it useful, it is called information. Data leaders are accountable for certain data domains and sets.
• Data storytelling: The ability to create a narrative powered by data and analytics that supports the hypothesis and intent of the story. Narrators of the story should deliver a significant view of the message in a way easily understood by the target audience. Data visualization can be used as a tactic to enhance storytelling.
• Data visualization: The ability to visually represent a complete story to the target audience powered by data & analytics, using data storytelling as an enabling mechanism to convey narratives. Typically, there are two types of visuals used as part of data visualization: explanatory/informative visuals (the entire story or specific aspects delivered to the audience) and exploratory visuals (the collected data used to clarify what questions must be answered).
• Data literacy: The ability to read, work with, analyze, and argue with data. Easy access to data is essential to exercising these skills. All organizational employees involved with data-driven decisions should learn to think critically about the data they use for analytics and how they assess and interpret the results of their work.
• Data quality: A measure of the condition of data based on factors such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, reliability, and being up-to-date. This is about how well-suited a data set is to serve its intended purpose, therefore business users and stakeholders set the standards for what is good enough. The governance function along with IT ensures that data quality measures are applied, and corrective actions taken.
• Analytics/Business intelligence (BI): A technology-driven process for analyzing data and delivering actionable information that helps executives, managers, and workers make informed business decisions. As part of the BI process, organizations collect data from internal IT systems and external sources, prepare it for analysis, run queries against the data, and create data visualizations.
  Note: In some frameworks, analytics and BI refer to different types of analyses (i.e. analytics predict future outcomes, BI describes what is or has been).

Getting value out of effective storytelling with data visualization

Data storytelling is gaining wide recognition as a tool for supporting businesses in driving data insights and making better strategic decisions.

92% of respondents agreed that data storytelling is an effective way of communicating or delivering data and analytics results.

87% of respondents agreed that if insights were presented in a simpler/clearer manner, their organization's leadership team would make more data-driven decisions.

93% of respondents agreed that decisions made based on successful data storytelling could potentially help increase revenue.

Source: Exasol, 2021

Despite organizations recognizing the value of data storytelling, issues remain which cannot be remedied solely with better technology.

61% Top challenges of conveying important insights through dashboards are lack of context (61%), over-communication (54%), and inability to customize contents for intended audiences (46%).

49% of respondents feel their organizations lack storytelling skills, regardless of whether employees are data literate.

Source: Exasol, 2021

Info-Tech Insight
Storytelling is a key component of data literacy. Although enterprises are increasingly investing in data analytics software, only 21% of employees are confident with their data literacy skills. (Accenture, 2020)

Prerequisite Checklist

Before applying Info-Tech's storytelling methodology, you should have addressed the following criteria:

• Select the right data visualization tools.
• Have the necessary training in statistical analysis and data visualization technology.
• Have competent levels of data literacy.
• Good quality data founded on data governance and data architecture best practices.

To get a complete view of the field you want to explore, please refer to the following Info-Tech resources:

Select and Implement a Reporting and Analytics Solution

Build a Data Architecture Roadmap

Establish Data Governance

Build Your Data Quality Program

Foster Data-Driven Culture With Data Literacy

Info-Tech's Storytelling With Data Visualization Framework

Info-Tech Insight
As organizations strive to become more data-driven, good storytelling with data visualization supports growing corporate data literacy and helps analysts provide insights that improve organizational decision-making and value-driving processes, which ultimately boosts business performance.

Research Benefits

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Document and Maintain Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Put your DRP on a diet – keep it fit, trim, and ready for action.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

The traditional disaster recovery plan (DRP) “red binder” is dead. It takes too long to create, it’s too hard to maintain, and it’s not usable in a crisis.

“This blueprint outlines the following key tactics to streamline your documentation effort and produce a better result:

• Write for an IT audience and focus on how to recover. You don’t need 30 pages of fluff describing the purpose of the document.
• Use flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams over traditional manuals. This drives documentation that is more concise, easier to maintain, and effective in a crisis.
• Create your DRP in layers to get tangible results faster, starting with a recovery workflow that outlines your DR strategy, and then build out the specific documentation needed to support recovery.”

This project is about DRP documentation after you have clarified your DR strategy; create these necessary inputs first

These artifacts are the cornerstone for any disaster recovery plan.

• Business Impact Analysis
• DR Roles and Responsibilities
• Recovery Workflow

Missing a component? Start here. ➔ Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan

This blueprint walks you through building these inputs.
Our approach saves clients on average US$16,825.22. (Clients self-reported an average saving of US$16,869.21 while completing the Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan blueprint through advisory calls, guided implementations, or workshops (Info-Tech Research Group, 2017, N=129).)

How this blueprint will help you document your DRP

This Research is Designed For:

• IT managers in charge of disaster recovery planning (DRP) and execution.
• Organizations seeking to optimize their DRP using best-practice methodology.
• Business continuity professionals that are involved with disaster recovery.

This Research Will Help You:

• Divide the process of creating DR documentation into manageable chunks, providing a defined scope for you to work in.
• Identify an appropriate DRP document management and distribution strategy.
• Ensure that DR documentation is up to date and accessible.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• IT managers preparing for a DR audit.
• IT managers looking to incorporate components of DR into an IT operations document.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Follow a structured approach in building DR documentation using best practices.
• Integrate DR into day-to-day IT operations.

Executive summary

Situation

• DR documentation is often driven by audit or compliance requirements, rather than aimed at the team that would need to execute recovery.
• Traditional DRPs are text-heavy, 300+ page manuals that are simply not usable in a crisis.
• Compounding the problem, DR documentation is rarely updated, so it’s just shelf-ware.

Complication

• DRP is often given lower priority as day-to-day IT projects displace DR documentation efforts.
• Inefficient publishing strategies result in your DRP not being accessible during disasters or key staff not knowing where to find the latest version.
• Organizations that create traditional DRPs end up with massive manuals that are difficult to maintain, so they quickly become unreliable.

Resolution

• Create visual and concise DR documentation that strips out unnecessary content and is written for an IT audience – the team that would actually be executing the recovery. Your business leaders can take the same approach to create separate business response plans – don’t mix the two into an all-in-one plan that is not effective for either audience.
• Determine a documentation distribution strategy that supports ease of maintenance and accessibility during a disaster.
• Incorporate DRP maintenance into change management and project intake procedures to systematically update and refine the DR documentation. Don’t save up changes for a year-end blitz, which turns document maintenance into an onerous project.

Info-Tech Insight

1. DR documentation fails when organizations try to boil the ocean with an all-in-one plan aimed at auditors, business leaders, and IT. It’s too long, too hard to maintain, and ends up being little more than shelf-ware.
2. Using flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams aimed at an IT audience is more concise and effective in a disaster, quicker to create, and easier to maintain.
3. Create your DRP in layers to keep the work manageable. Start with a recovery workflow to ensure a coordinated response, and build out supporting documentation over time.

An effective DRP that mitigates a wide range of potential outages is critical to minimizing the impact of downtime

The criticality of having an effective DRP is underestimated.

Cost of Downtime for the Fortune 1000

• Cost of unplanned apps downtime per year: $1.25B to $2.5B
• Cost of critical apps failure per hour: $500,000 to $1M
• Cost of infrastructure failure per hour: $100,000
• 35% reported to have recovered within 12 hours.
• 17% of infrastructure failures took more than 24 hours to recover.
• 13% of application failures took more than 24 hours to recover.

Size of Impact Increasing Across Industries

• The cost of downtime is rising across the board and not just for organizations that traditionally depend on IT (e.g. e-commerce).
• Downtime cost increase since 2010:
  • Hospitality: 129% increase
  • Transportation: 108% increase
  • Media organizations: 104% increase

Potential Lost Revenue

The impact of downtime increases significantly over time, not just in terms of lost revenue (as illustrated here) but also goodwill/reputation and health/safety. An effective DR solution and overall resiliency that mitigate a wide range of potential outages are critical to minimizing the impact of downtime.

Without an effective DRP, your organization is gambling on being able to define and implement a recovery strategy during a time of crisis. At the very least, this means extended downtime – potentially weeks – and substantial impact.

Only 38% of those with a full or mostly complete DRP believe their DRPs would be effective in a real crisis

Organizations continue to struggle with creating DRPs, let alone making them actionable.

Why are so many living with either an incomplete or ineffective DRP? For the same reasons that IT documentation in general continues to be a pain point:

• It is an outdated model of what documentation should be – the traditional manual with detailed (lengthy) descriptions and procedures.
• Despite the importance of DR, low priority is placed on creating a DRP and the day-to-day SOPs required to support a recovery.
• There is a lack of effective processes for ensuring documentation stays up to date.

(Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N=165)

(Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N=69 (includes only those who indicated DRP is mostly completed or completed))

Improve usability and effectiveness with visual-based and more-concise documentation

Choose flowcharts over process guides, checklists over lengthy procedures, and diagrams over descriptions.

If you need a three-inch binder to hold your DRP, imagine having to flip through it to determine next steps during a crisis.

DR documentation needs to be concise, scannable, and quickly understood to be effective. Visual-based documentation meets these requirements, so it’s no surprise that it also leads to higher DR success.

DR success scores are based on:

• Meeting recovery time objectives (RTOs).
• Meeting recovery point objectives (RPOs).
• IT staff’s confidence in their ability to meet RTOs/RPOs.

“Without question, 300-page DRPs are not effective. I mean, auditors love them because of the detail, but give me a 10-page DRP with contact lists, process flows, diagrams, and recovery checklists that are easy to follow.” (Bernard Jones, MBCI, CBCP, CORP, Manager Disaster Recovery/BCP, ActiveHealth Management)

Maintainability is another argument for visual-based, concise documentation

There are two end goals for your DR documentation: effectiveness and maintainability. Without either, you will not have success during a disaster.

Organizations using a visual-based approach were 30% more likely to find that DR documentation is easy to maintain.	➔	“Easy to maintain” leads to a 46% higher rate of DR success.

Not only are visual-based disaster recovery plans more effective, but they are also easier to maintain.

Overcome documentation inertia with a tiered model that allows you to eat the elephant one bite at a time

Start with a recovery workflow to at least ensure a coordinated response. Then use that workflow to determine required supporting documentation.

Recovery Workflow: Starting the project with overly detailed documentation can slow down the entire process. Overcome planning inertia by starting with high-level incident response plans in a flowchart format. For examples and additional information, see XMPL Medical’s Recovery Workflows.

Recovery Procedures (Systems Recovery Playbook): For each step in the high-level flowchart, create recovery procedures where necessary using additional flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams as appropriate. Leverage Info-Tech’s Systems Recovery Playbook example as a starting point.

Additional Reference Documentation: Reference existing IT documentation, such as network diagrams and configuration documents, as well as more detailed step-by-step procedures where necessary (e.g. vendor documentation), particularly where needed to support alternate recovery staff who may not be as well versed as the primary system owners.

Info-Tech Insight

Organizations that use flowcharts, checklist, and diagrams over traditional, dense DRP manuals are far more likely to meet their RTOs/RPOs because their documentation is more usable and easier to maintain.

Use a DRP summary document to satisfy executives, auditors, and clients

Stakeholders don’t have time to sift through a pile of paper. Summarize your overall continuity capabilities in one, easy-to-read place.

DRP Summary Document

• Summarize BIA results
• Summarize DR strategy (including DR sites)
• Summarize backup strategy
• Summarize testing and maintenance plans

Follow Info-Tech’s methodology to make DRP documentation efficient and effective

Follow XMPL Medical’s journey through DR documentation

CASE STUDY

Industry Healthcare
Source Created by amalgamating data from Info-Tech’s client base

Streamline your documentation and maintenance process by following the approach outlined in XMPL Medical’s journey to an end-to-end DRP.

Outline of the Disaster Recovery Plan

XMPL’s disaster recovery plan includes its business impact analysis and a subset of tier 1 and tier 2 patient care applications.

Its DRP includes incident response flowcharts, system recovery checklists, and a communication plan. Its DRP also references IT operations documentation (e.g. asset management documents, system specs, and system configuration docs), but this material is not published with the example documentation.

Resulting Disaster Recovery Plan

XMPL’s DRP includes actionable documents in the form of high-level disaster response plan flowcharts and system recovery checklists. During an incident, the DR team is able to clearly see the items for which they are responsible.

Disaster Recovery Plan

• Recovery Workflow
• Business Impact Analysis
• DRP Summary
• System Recovery Checklists
• Communication, Assessment, and Disaster Declaration Plan

Info-Tech Best Practice

XMPL Medical’s disaster recovery plan illustrates an effective DRP. Model your end-to-end disaster recovery plan after XMPL’s completed templates. The specific data points will differ from organization to organization, but the structure of each document will be similar.

Model your disaster recovery documentation off of our example

CASE STUDY

Industry Healthcare
Source Created by amalgamating data from Info-Tech’s client base

Recovery Workflow:

• Recovery Workflows (PDF, VSDX)

Recovery Procedures (Systems Recovery Playbook):

• DR Notification, Assessment, and Disaster Declaration Plan
• Systems Recovery Playbook
• Network Topology Diagrams

Additional Reference Documentation:

• DRP Workbook
• Business Impact Analysis
• DRP Summary Document

Use Info-Tech’s DRP Maturity Scorecard to evaluate your progress

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Document and Maintain Your Disaster Recovery Plan – Project Overview

	1. Streamline DRP Documentation	2. Select the Optimal DRP Publishing Strategy	3. Keep Your DRP Relevant
Best-Practice Toolkit	1.1 Start with a recovery workflow 1.2 Create supporting DRP documentation 1.3 Write the DRP summary	2.1 Create Committee Profiles	3.1 Build Governance Structure Map 3.2 Create Committee Profiles
Guided Implementations	Review Info-Tech’s approach to DRP documentation. Create a high-level recovery workflow. Create supporting DRP documentation. Write the DRP summary.	Identify criteria for selecting a DRP publishing strategy. Select a DRP publishing strategy. Optional: Select requirements for a BCM tool and issue an RFP. Optional: Review responses to RFP.	Learn best practices for integrating DRP maintenance into day-to-day IT processes. Learn best practices for DRP-focused reviews.
Onsite Workshop	Module 1: Streamline DRP documentation	Module 2: Select the optimal DRP publishing strategy	Module 3: Learn best practices for keeping your DRP relevant
	Phase 1 Outcome: A complete end-to-end DRP	Phase 2 Outcome: Selection of a publishing and management tool for your DRP documentation	Phase 3 Outcome: Strategy for maintaining your DRP documentation

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Workshop Goal: Learn how to document and maintain your DRP.

Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research

Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.

This icon denotes a slide where a supporting Info-Tech tool or template will help you perform the activity or step associated with the slide. Refer to the supporting tool or template to get the best results and proceed to the next step of the project.

This icon denotes a slide with an associated activity. The activity can be performed either as part of your project or with the support of Info-Tech team members, who will come onsite to facilitate a workshop for your organization.

Phase 1: Streamline DRP Documentation

Step 1.1: Start with a recovery workflow

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Review a model DRP.
• Review your recovery workflow.
• Identify documentation required to support the recovery workflow.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner
• System SMEs
• Alternate DR Personnel

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding the visual-based, concise approach to DR documentation.
• Creating a recovery workflow that provides a roadmap for coordinating incident response and identifying required supporting documentation.

Info-Tech Insights

A DRP is a collection of procedures and supporting documents that allow an organization to recover its IT services to minimize system downtime for the business.

1.1 — Start with a recovery workflow to ensure a coordinated response and identify required supporting documentation

The recovery workflow clarifies your DR strategy and ensures the DR team is on the same page.

“We use flowcharts for our declaration procedures. Flowcharts are more effective when you have to explain status and next steps to upper management.” (Assistant Director-IT Operations, Healthcare Industry)

Review business impact analysis (BIA) results to plan your recovery workflow

The BIA defines system criticality from the business’s perspective. Use it to guide system recovery order.

Specifically, review the following from your BIA:

• The list of tier 1, 2, and 3 applications. This will dictate the recovery order in your recovery workflow.
• Application dependencies. This will outline what needs to be included as part of an application recovery workflow.
• The recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) for each application. This will also guide the recovery, and enable you to identify gaps where the recovery workflow does not meet RTOs and RPOs.

CASE STUDY: The XMPL DRP documentation is based on this Business Impact Analysis Tool.

Haven’t conducted a BIA? Use Info-Tech’s streamlined approach.

Info-Tech’s publication Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan takes a very practical approach to BIA work. Our process gives IT leaders a mechanism to quickly get agreement on system recovery order and DR investment priorities.

Conduct a tabletop planning exercise to determine your recovery workflow

1.1.1 Tabletop Planning Exercise

1. Define a scenario to drive the tabletop planning exercise:
   • Use a scenario that forces a full failover to your DR environment, so you can capture an end-to-end recovery workflow.
   • Avoid scenarios that impact health and safety such as tornados or a fire. You want to focus on IT recovery.
   • Example scenarios: Burst water pipe that causes data-center-wide damage or a gas leak that forces evacuation and power to be shut down for at least two days.

Note: You may have already completed this exercise as part of Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan.

Info-Tech Insight

Use scenarios to provide context for DR planning, and to test your plans, but don’t create a separate plan for every possibility.

The high-level recovery plan will be the same whether the incident is a fire, flood, or tornado. While there might be some variances and outliers, these scenarios can be addressed by adding decision points and/or separate, supplementary instructions.

Walk through the scenario and capture the recovery workflow

2. Capture the following information for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 systems:
   1. On white cue cards, record the steps and track start and end times for each step (where 00:00 is when the incident occurred).
   2. On yellow cue cards, document gaps in people, process, and technology requirements to complete the step.
   3. On red cue cards, indicate risks (e.g. no backup person for a key staff member).

Note:

• Ensure the language is sufficiently genericized (e.g. refer to events, not specifically a burst water pipe).
• Review isolated failures (e.g. hardware, software). Typically, the recovery procedure documented for individual systems covers the essence of the recovery workflow whether it’s just the one system that failed or it’s part of a site-wide recovery.

Note: You may have already completed this exercise as part of Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan.

Document your current-state recovery workflow based on the results of the tabletop planning

After you finish the tabletop planning exercise, the steps on the set of cue cards define your recovery workflow. Capture this in a flowchart format.

Use the sample DRP to guide your own flowchart. Some notes on the example are:

• XMPL’s Incident Management to DR flowchart shows the connection between its standard Service Desk processes and DR processes.
• XMPL’s high-level workflows outline its recovery of tier 1, 2, and 3 systems.
• Where more detail is required, include links to supporting documentation. In this example, XMPL Medical includes links to its Systems Recovery Playbook.

This sample flowchart is included in XMPL Recovery Workflows.

Step 1.2: Create Supporting DRP Documentation

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Create checklists for your playbook.
• Document more complex procedures with flowcharts.
• Gather and/or write network topology diagrams.
• Compile a contact list.
• Ensure there is enough material for backup personnel.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner
• System SMEs
• Backup DR Personnel

Outcomes of this step

• Actionable supporting documentation for your disaster recovery plan.
• Contact list for IT personnel, business personnel, and vendor support.

1.2 — Create supporting documentation for your disaster recovery plan

Now that you have a high-level incident response plan, collect the information you need for executing that plan.

Info-Tech Insight

Write for your audience. The playbook is for IT; include only the information they need to execute the plan. DRP summaries are for executives and auditors; do not include information intended for IT. Similarly, your disaster recovery plan is not for business units; keep BCP content out of your DRP.

Use checklists to streamline step-by-step procedures

Checklists are ideal when staff just need a reminder of what to do, not how to do it.

XMPL Medical used its high-level flowcharts as a roadmap for creating its Systems Recovery Playbook.

• Since its Playbook is intended for experienced IT staff, the writing style in the checklists is concise. XMPL includes links to reference material to support recovery, especially for alternate staff who might need additional instruction.
• XMPL includes key parameters (e.g. IP addresses) rather than assume those details would be memorized, especially in a stressful DR scenario.
• Similarly, include links to other useful resources such as VM templates.

Included in the XMPL Systems Recovery Playbook are checklists for recovering XMPL’s virtual desktop infrastructure, mission-critical applications, and core infrastructure components.

Use flowcharts to document processes with concurrent tasks not easily captured in a checklist

Recovery procedures can consist of flowcharts, checklists, or both, as well as diagrams. The main goal is to be clear and concise.

• XMPL Medical created a flowchart to capture its phone services recovery procedure to capture concurrent tasks.
• Additional instructions, where required, could still be captured in a Playbook checklist or other supporting documentation.
• The flowchart could have also included key settings or other details as appropriate, particularly if the DR team chose to maintain this recovery procedure just in a flowchart format.

Included in the XMPL DR documentation is an example flowchart for recovering phone systems. This flowchart is in Recovery Workflows.

Reference this blueprint for more SOP flowchart examples: Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind

Use topology diagrams to capture network layout, integrations, and system information

Topology diagrams, key checklists, and configuration settings are often enough for experienced networking staff to carry out their DR tasks.

• XMPL Medical includes these diagrams with its DRP. Instead of recreating these diagrams, the XMPL Medical DR Manager asked their network team for these diagrams:
  • Primary data center diagram
  • DR site diagram
  • High-level network diagrams
• Often, organizations already have network topology diagrams for reference purposes.

“Our network engineers came to me and said our standard SOP template didn't work for them. They're now using a lot of diagrams and flowcharts, and that has worked out better for them.” (Assistant Director-IT Operations, Healthcare Industry)

You can download a PDF and a VSD version of these Data Center and Network Diagrams from Info-Tech’s website.

Create a list of organizational, IT, and vendor contacts that may be required to assist with recovery

If there is something strange happening to your IT infrastructure, who you gonna call?

Many DR managers have their team on speed dial. However, having the contact info of alternate staff, BCP leads, and vendors can be very helpful during a disaster. XMPL Medical lists the following information in its DRP Workbook:

• The DR Teams, SMEs critical to disaster recovery, their backups, and key contacts (e.g. BC Management team leads, vendor contacts) that would be involved in:
  • Declaring a disaster.
  • Coordinating a response at an organizational level.
  • Executing recovery.
• The people that have authority to declare a disaster.
• Each person’s spending authority.
• The rules for delegating authority.
• Primary and alternate staff for each role.

Confirm with your DR team that you have all of the documentation that you need to recover during a disaster

DISCUSS: Is there enough information in your DRP for both primary and backup DR personnel?

• Is it clear who is responsible for each DR task, including notification steps?
• Have alternate staff for each role been identified?
• Does the recovery workflow capture all of the high-level steps?
• Is there enough documentation for alternate staff (e.g. network specs)?

Step 1.3: Write the DRP Summary

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Write a DRP summary document.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner

Outcomes of this step

• High-level outline of your DRP capabilities for stakeholders such as executives, auditors, and clients.

Summarize your DR capabilities using a DRP summary document

1.3.1 DRP Summary Document

The sample included on Info-Tech’s website is customized for the XMPL Medical Case Study – use the download as a starting point for your own summary document.

• Business Impact Analysis
• DRP Recovery Workflows
• Supporting Documentation
• Outputs from Reduce Costly Downtime Through DR Testing

DRP Summary Document

XMPL’s DRP Summary is organized into the following categories:

• DR requirements: This includes a summary of scope, business impact analysis (BIA), risk assessment, and high-level RTOs and achievable RTOs.
• DR strategy: This includes a summary of XMPL’s recovery procedures, DR site, and backup strategy.
• Testing and maintenance: This includes a summary of XMPL’s DRP testing and maintenance strategy.

Be transparent about existing business risks in your DRP summary

The DRP summary document is business facing. Include information of which business leaders (and other stakeholders) need to be aware.

• Discrepancies between desired and achievable RTOs? Organizational leadership needs to know this information. Only then can they assign the resources and budget that IT needs to achieve the desired DR capabilities.
• What is the DRP’s scope? XMPL Medical lists the IT components that will be recovered during a disaster, and components which will not. For instance, XMPL’s DRP does not recover medical equipment, and XMPL has separate plans for business continuity and emergency response coordination.

The above table to is a snippet from the XMPL DR Summary Document (section 2.1.3.2).

In the example, the DR team is unable to recover tier 1, 2, and 3 systems within the desired RTO. As such, they clearly communicate this information in the DRP summary, and include action items to address these gaps.

Phase 2: Select the Optimal DRP Publishing Strategy

Step 2.1: Select a DRP Publishing Strategy

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Select criteria for assessing DRP tools.
• Evaluate categories for DRP tools.
• Optional: Write an RFP for a BCM tool.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner

Outcomes of this step

• Identified strategies for publishing your DRP (i.e. making it available to your DR team).

Info-Tech Insights

Diversify your publishing strategy to ensure you can access your DRP in a disaster. For example, if you are using a BCM tool or SharePoint Online as your primary documentation repository, also push the DRP to your DR team’s smartphones as a backup in case the disaster affects internet access.

2.1 — Select a DR publishing and document management strategy that fits your organization

Publishing and document management considerations:

Portability/External Access: Assume your primary site is down and inaccessible. Can you still access your documentation? As shown in this chart, traditional strategies of either keeping a copy at another location (e.g. at the failover site) or with staff (e.g. on a USB drive) still dominate, but these aren’t necessarily the best options.	➔	Note: Percentages total more than 100% due to respondents using more than one portability strategy. (Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N=118)
Maintainability/Usability: How easy is it to create, update, and use the documentation? Is it easy to link to other documents as shown in the flowchart and checklist examples? Is there version control? Lack of version control can create a maintenance nightmare as well as issues in a crisis if staff are questioning whether they have the right version.
Cost/Effort: Is the cost and effort appropriate? For example, a large enterprise may need a formal solution (e.g. DRP tools or SharePoint), but the cost might be hard to justify for a smaller company.

Pros and cons of potential strategies

This section will review the following strategies, their pros and cons, and how they meet publishing and document management requirements:

• DRP tools (e.g. eBRP, Recovery Planner, LDRPS)
• In-house solutions combining SharePoint and MS Office (or equivalent)
• Wiki site
• “Manual” approaches such as storing documents on a USB drive

Avoid 42 hours of downtime due to a non-diversified publishing strategy

CASE STUDY

Industry Municipality
Source Interview

Situation

• A municipal government has recently completed an end-to-end disaster recovery plan.
• The team is feeling good about the fact that they were able to identify:
  • Relative criticality of applications.
  • Dependencies for each application.
  • Incident response plans for the current state and desired state.
  • System recovery procedures.

Challenge

• While the DR plan itself was comprehensive, the team only published the DR onto the government’s network drives.
• A power generation issue caused power to be shut down, which in turn cascaded into downtime for the network.
• Once the network was down, their DRP was inaccessible.

Insights

• Each piece of documentation that was created could have contributed to recovery efforts. However, because they were inaccessible, there was a delayed response to the incident. The result was 42 hours of downtime for end users.
• Having redundant publishing strategies is just like having redundant IT infrastructure. In the event of downtime, not only do you need to have DR documentation, but you also need to make sure that it is accessible.

Decide on a DR publishing strategy by looking at portability, maintainability, cost, and required effort

Use the information included in Step 2.1 to guide your analysis of DRP publishing solutions.

The tool enables you to compare two possible solutions based on these key considerations discussed in this section:

• Portability/external access
• Maintainability/usability
• Cost
• Effort

The right choice will depend on factors such as current in-house tools, maturity around document management, the size of your IT department, and so on.

For example, a small shop may do very well with the USB drive strategy, whereas a multi-national company will need a more formal strategy to manage consistent DRP distribution.

The DRP Publishing and Management Solution Evaluation Tool helps you to evaluate the tools included in this section.

Don’t think of a business continuity management (BCM) tool as a silver bullet; know what you’re getting out of it

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Typically a SaaS option provides built-in external access with appropriate security and user administration to vary access rights.
• Cons: Degree of external access is often dependent on the vendor.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in templates encourage consistency and guide initial content development by indicating what details need to be captured.
• Pros: Built-in document management (e.g. version control, metadata support), centralized access/navigation to required documents, and some automation (e.g. update contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Not a silver bullet. You still have to do the work to define and capture your processes.
• Cons: Requires end-user and administrator training.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: For large enterprises, the convenience of built-in document management and templates can outweigh the cost.
• Cons: Expect leading DRP tools to cost $20K or more per year.

About this approach:
BCM tools are solutions that provide templates, tools, and document management to create BC and DR documentation.

Info-Tech Insight

The business case for a BCM tool is built by answering the following questions:

• Will the BCM tool solve an unmet need?
• Will the tool be more effective and efficient than an in-house solution?
• Will the solution provide enhanced capabilities that an in-house solution cannot provide?

If you cannot get a satisfactory answer to each of these questions, then opt for an in-house solution.

“We explored a DRP tool, and it was something we might have used, but it was tens of thousands of pounds per year, so it didn’t stack up financially for us at all.” (Rik Toms, Head of Strategy – IP and IT, Cable and Wireless Communications)

For in-house solutions, leverage tools such as SharePoint to provide document management capabilities

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: SharePoint is commonly web-enabled and supports external access with appropriate security and user administration.
• Cons: Must be installed at redundant sites or be cloud-based to be effective in a crisis that takes down your primary data center.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in document management (e.g. version control, metadata support) as well as centralized access/navigation to required documents.
• Pros: No tool learning curve – SharePoint and MS Office would be existing solutions already used on a daily basis.
• Cons: No built-in automation (e.g. automated updates to contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Consistency depends on creating templates and implementing processes for document updates, review, and approval.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: Using existing tools, so this is a sunk cost in terms of capex.
• Cons: Additional effort required to create templates and manage the documentation library.

About this approach:
DRPs and SOPs most often start as MS Office documents, even if there is a DRP tool available. For organizations that elect to bypass a formal DRP tool, and most do, the biggest gap they have to overcome is document management.

Many organizations are turning to SharePoint to meet this need. For those that already have SharePoint in place, it makes sense to further leverage SharePoint for DR documentation and day-to-day SOPs.

For SharePoint to be a practical solution, the documentation must still be accessible if the primary data center is down, e.g. by having redundant SharePoint instances at multiple in-house locations, or using a cloud-based SharePoint solution.

“Just about everything that a DR planning tool does, you can do yourself using homegrown solutions or tools that you're already familiar with such as Word, Excel, and SharePoint.” (Allen Zuk, President and CEO, Sierra Management Consulting)

A healthcare company uses SharePoint as its DRP and SOP documentation management solution

CASE STUDY Healthcare

• This organization is responsible for 50 medical facilities across three states.
• It explored DRP tools, but didn’t find the right fit, so it has developed an in-house solution based in SharePoint. While DRP tools have improved, the organization no longer needs that type of solution. Its in-house solution is meeting its needs.
• It has SharePoint instances at multiple locations to ensure availability if one site is down.

Documentation Strategy

• Created an IT operations library in SharePoint for DR and SOPs, from basic support to bare-metal restore procedures.
• SOPs are linked from SharePoint to the virtual help desk for greater accessibility.
• Where practical, diagrams and flowcharts are used, e.g. DR process flowcharts and network services SOPs dominated by diagrams and flowcharts.

Management Strategy

• Directors and the CIO have made finishing off SOPs their performance improvement objective for the year. The result is staff have made time to get this work done.
• Status updates are posted monthly, and documentation is a regular agenda item in leadership meetings.
• Regular tabletop testing validates documentation and ensures familiarity with procedures, including where to find required information.

Results

• Dependency on a few key individuals has been reduced. All relevant staff know what they need to do and where to access required documentation.
• SOPs are enabling DR training as well as day-to-day operations training for new staff.
• The organization has a high confidence in its ability to recovery from a disaster within established timelines.

Explore using a wiki site as an inexpensive alternative to SharePoint and other content management solutions

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Wiki sites can support external access as with any web solution.
• Cons: Must be installed at redundant sites, hosted, or cloud-based to be effective in a crisis that takes down your primary data center.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in document management (version control, metadata support, etc.) as well as centralized access/navigation to required information.
• Pros: Authorized users can make updates dynamically, depending on how much restriction you have on the site.
• Cons: No built-in automation (e.g. automated updates to contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Consistency depends on creating templates and implementing processes for document updates, review, and approval.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: An inexpensive option compared to traditional content management solutions such as SharePoint.
• Cons: Learning curve if wikis are new to your organization.

About this approach:
Wiki sites are websites where users collaborate to create and edit the content. Wikipedia is an example.

While wiki sites are typically used for collaboration and dynamic content development, the traditional collaborative authoring model can be restricted to provide structure and an approval process.

Several tools are available to create and manage wiki sites (and other collaboration solutions), as outlined in the following research:

• Modernize Communications and Collaboration infrastructure
• Vendor Landscape: Collaboration Platforms

Info-Tech Insight

If your organization is not already using wiki sites, this technology can introduce a culture shock. Start slow by using a wiki site within a specific department or for a particular project. Then evaluate how well your staff adapt to this technology as well as its potential effectiveness in your organization. Refer to our collaboration strategy research for additional guidance.

For small IT shops, distributing documentation to key staff (e.g. via a USB drive) can still be effective

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Appropriate staff have the documentation with them; there is no need to log into a remote site or access a tool to get at the information.
• Cons: Relies on staff to be diligent about ensuring they have the latest documentation and keep it with them (not leave it in their desk drawer).

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: With this strategy, MS Office (or equivalent) is used to create and maintain the documentation, so there is no learning curve.
• Pros: Simple, straightforward methodology – keep the master on a network drive, and download a copy to your USB drive.
• Cons: No built-in automation (e.g. automated updates to contact information) or document management (e.g. version control).
• Cons: Consistency depends on creating templates and implementing rigid processes for document updates, review, and approval.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: Little to no cost and no tool management required.
• Cons: “Manual” document management requires strict attention to process for version control, updates, approvals, and distribution.

About this approach:
With this strategy, your ERT and key IT staff keep a copy of your DRP and relevant documentation with them (e.g. on a USB drive). If the primary site experiences a major event, they have ready access to the documentation.

Fifty percent of respondents in our recent survey use this strategy. A common scenario is to use a shared network drive or a solution such as SharePoint as the master centralized repository, but distribute a copy to key staff.

Info-Tech Insight

This approach can have similar disadvantages as using hard copies. Ensuring the USB drives are up to date, and that all staff who might need access have a copy, can become a burdensome process. More often, USB drives are updated periodically, so there is the risk that the information will be out of date or incomplete.

Avoid extensive use of paper copies of DR documentation

DR documents need to be easy to update, accessible from anywhere, and searchable. Paper doesn’t meet these needs.

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Does not rely on technology or power.
• Cons: Requires all staff who might be involved in a DR to have a copy, and to have it with them at all times, to truly have access at any time from anywhere.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: In terms of usability, again there is no dependence on technology.
• Cons: Updates need to be printed and distributed to all relevant staff every time there is a change to ensure staff have access to the latest, most accurate documentation if a disaster occurred. You can’t schedule disasters, so information needs to be current all the time.
• Cons: Navigation to other information is manual – flipping through pages, etc. No searching or hyperlinks.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: No technology system to maintain, aside from what you use for printing.
• Cons: Printing expenses are actually among the highest incurred by organizations, and this adds to it.
• Cons: Labor intensive due to need to print and physically distribute documentation updates.

About this approach:
Traditionally DRPs are printed and distributed to managers and/or kept in a central location at both the primary site and a secondary site. In addition, wallet cards are distributed that contain key information such as contact numbers.

A wallet card or even a few printed copies of your high-level DRP for general reference can be helpful, but paper is not a practical solution for your overall DR documentation library, particularly when you include SOPs for recovery procedures.

One argument in favor of paper is there is no dependency on power during a crisis. However, in a power outage, staff can use smartphones and potentially laptops (with battery power) to access electronically stored documentation to get through first response steps. In addition, your DR site should have backup power to be an appropriate recovery site.

Optional: Partial list of BCM tool vendors

The list is only a partial list of BCM tool vendors. The order in which vendors are presented, and inclusion in this list, does not represent an endorsement.

Optional: Use our list of requirements as a foundation for selecting and reviewing BCM tools

If a BCM tool is the best option for your environment, expedite the evaluation process with our BCM Tool – RFP Selection Criteria.

Through advisory services, workshops, and consulting engagements, we have created this BCM Tool Requirements List. The featured requirements includes the following categories:

1. Integrations
2. Planning and Monitoring
3. Administration
4. Architecture
5. Security
6. Support and Training

This BCM Tool – RFP Selection Criteria can be appended to an RFP. You can leverage Info-Tech’s RFP Template if your organization does not have one.

Info-Tech can write full RFPs

As part of a consulting engagement, Info-Tech can write RFPs for BCM tools and provide a customized scoring tool based on your environment’s unique requirements.

Phase 3: Keep Your DRP Relevant Through Maintenance Best Practices

Step 3.1: Integrate DRP maintenance into core IT processes

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Integrate DRP maintenance with Project Management.
• Integrate DRP considerations into Change Management.
• Integrate with Performance Management.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner
• Head of Project Management Office
• Head of Change Advisory Board
• CIO

Outcomes of this step

• Updated project intake form.
• Updated change management practice.
• Updated performance appraisals.

3.1 — Incorporate DRP maintenance into core IT processes

Focusing on these three processes will help ensure that your plan stays current, accurate, and usable.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Prioritize quick wins that will have large benefits. The advice presented in this section offers easy ways to help keep your DRP up to date. These simple solutions can save a lot of time and effort for your DRP team as opposed to more intricate changes to the processes above.

Assess how new projects impact service criticality and DR requirements upfront during project intake

Understand the RTO/RPO requirements and IT impacts for new or enhanced services to ensure appropriate provisioning and overall DRP updates.

• Have submitters include service continuity requirements. This information can be inserted into your business impact analysis. Use similar language that you use in your own BIA.
  • The submitter should know how critical the resulting project will be. Any items that the submitter doesn’t know, the Project Steering Committee should investigate.
• Have IT assess the impact on the DRP. The submitter will not know how the DRP will be impacted directly. Ask the project committee to consider how DRP documentation and the DR environment will need to be changed due to the project under consideration.

Note: The goal is not to make DR a roadblock, but rather to ensure project requirements will be met – including availability and DR requirements.

This Project Intake Form asks the submitter to fill out the availability and criticality requirements for the project.

Leverage your change management process to identify required DRP updates as they occur

Avoid the year-end rush to update your DRP. Keeping it up to date as changes occur saves time in the long run and ensures your plan is accurate when you need it.

• As part of your change management process, identify potential updates to:
  • System documentation (e.g. configuration settings).
  • Recovery procedures (e.g. if a system has been virtualized, that changes the recovery procedure).
  • Your DR environment (e.g. system configuration updates for standby systems).
• Keep track of how often a system has changed. Relevant DRP documentation might be due for a deeper review:
  • After a system has been changed ten times (even from routine changes), notify your DRP Manager to flag the relevant DRP documentation for review.
  • As part of formal DRP reviews, pay closer attention to DRP documentation for the flagged systems.

This template asks the submitter to fill out the availability and criticality requirements for the project.

For change management best practices beyond DRP considerations, please see Optimize Change Management.

Integrate documentation into performance measurement and performance management

Documentation is a necessary evil – few like to create it and more immediate tasks take priority. If it isn’t scheduled and prioritized, it won’t happen.

“Our directors and our CIO have tied SOP work to performance evaluations, and SOP status is reviewed during management meetings. People have now found time to get this work done.” (Assistant Director – IT Operations, Healthcare Industry)

Step 3.2: Conduct an Annual Focused Review

This step will walk you through the following activities:

1. Identify components of your DRP to refresh.
2. Identify organizational changes requiring further focus.
3. Test your DRP and identify problems.
4. Correct problems identified with DRP.

This step involves the following participants:

• DRP Owner
• System SMEs
• Backup DR Personnel

Outcomes of this step

• An actionable, up-to-date DRP.

Info-Tech Insight

Testing is a waste of time and resources if you do not fix what’s broken. Tabletop testing is effective at uncovering gaps in your DR processes, but if you don’t address those gaps, then your DRP will still be unusable in a disaster.

Set up a safety net to capture changes that slipped through the cracks with a focused review process

Evaluate documentation supporting high-priority systems, as well as documentation supporting IT systems that have been significantly changed.

• Ideally you’re maintaining documentation as you go along. But you need to have an annual review to catch items that may have slipped through.
• Don’t review everything. Instead, review:
  • IT systems that have had 10+ changes: small changes and updates can add up over time. Ensure:
    • The plans for these systems are updated for changes (e.g. configuration changes).
    • SMEs and backup personnel are familiar with the changes.
  • Tier 1 / Gold Systems: Ensure that you can still recover tier 1 systems with your existing DRP documentation.
• Track documentation issues that you discovered with your ticketing system or service desk tool to ensure necessary documentation changes are made.

1. Annual Focused Review
2. Tier 1 Systems
3. Significantly Changed Systems
4. Organizational Changes

Identify larger changes, both organizational and within IT, that necessitate DRP updates

During your focused review, consider how organizational changes have impacted your DRP.

The COBIT 5 Enablers provide a foundation for this analysis. Consider:

• Changes in regulatory requirements: Are there new requirements for IT that are not reflected in your DRP? Is the organization required to comply with any additional regulations?
• Changes to organizational structures, business processes, and how employees work: Can employees still be productive once tier 1 services are restored or have RTOs changed? Has organizational turnover impacted your DRP?
• SMEs leaving or changing roles: Can IT still execute your DRP? Are there still people for all the key roles?
• Changes to IT infrastructure and applications: Can the business still access the information they need during a disaster? Is your BIA still accurate? Do new services need to be considered tier 1?

Info-Tech Best Practice

COBIT 5 Enablers
What changes need to be reflected in your DRP?

Create a plan during your annual focused review to test your DRP throughout the year

Regardless of your documentation approach, training and familiarity with relevant procedures is critical.

• Start with tabletop exercises and progress to technology-based testing (simulation, parallel, and full-scale testing).
• Ask staff to reference documentation while testing, even if they do not need to. This practice helps to confirm documentation accuracy and accessibility.
• Incorporate cross-training in DR testing. This gives important experience to backup personnel and will further validate that documents are complete and accurate.
• Track any discovered documentation issues with your ticketing system or project tracking tools to ensure necessary documentation changes are made.

Example Test Schedule:

1. Q1: Tabletop testing shadowed by backup personnel
2. Q2: Tabletop testing led by backup personnel
3. Q3: Technology-based testing
4. Annual Focused Review: Review Results

Reference this blueprint for guidance on DRP testing plans: Reduce Costly Downtime Through DR Testing

Appendix A: XMPL Case Study

Follow XMPL Medical’s journey through DR documentation

CASE STUDY

Industry Healthcare
Source Created by amalgamating data from Info-Tech’s client base

Streamline your documentation and maintenance process by following the approach outlined in XMPL Medical’s journey to an end-to-end DRP.

Outline of the Disaster Recovery Plan

XMPL’s disaster recovery plan includes its business impact analysis and a subset of tier 1 and tier 2 patient care applications.

Its DRP includes incident response flowcharts, system recovery checklists, and a communication plan. Its DRP also references IT operations documentation (e.g. asset management documents, system specs, and system configuration docs), but this material is not published with the example documentation.

Resulting Disaster Recovery Plan

XMPL’s DRP includes actionable documents in the form of high-level disaster response plan flowcharts and system recovery checklists. During an incident, the DR team is able to clearly see the items for which they are responsible.

Disaster Recovery Plan

• Recovery Workflow
• Business Impact Analysis
• DRP Summary
• System Recovery Checklists
• Communication, Assessment, and Disaster Declaration Plan

Info-Tech Best Practice

XMPL Medical’s disaster recovery plan illustrates an effective DRP. Model your end-to-end disaster recovery plan after XMPL’s completed templates. The specific data points will differ from organization to organization, but the structure of each document will be similar.

Model your disaster recovery documentation off of our example

CASE STUDY

Industry Healthcare
Source Created by amalgamating data from Info-Tech’s client base

Recovery Workflow:

• Recovery Workflows (PDF, VSDX)

Recovery Procedures (Systems Recovery Playbook):

• DR Notification, Assessment, and Disaster Declaration Plan
• Systems Recovery Playbook
• Network Topology Diagrams

Additional Reference Documentation:

• DRP Workbook
• Business Impact Analysis
• DRP Summary Document

Use our structure to create your practical disaster recovery plan.

Appendix B: Summary, Next Steps, and Bibliography

Insight breakdown

Use visual-based documentation instead of a traditional DRP manual.

• Flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams are more concise, easier to maintain, and more effective in a crisis.
• Write for an IT audience and focus on how to recover. You don’t need 30 pages of fluff describing the purpose of the document.

Create your DRP in layers to keep the work manageable.

• Start with a recovery workflow to ensure a coordinated response, and build out supporting documentation over time.

Prioritize quick wins to make DRP maintenance easier and more likely to happen.

• Incorporate DRP maintenance into change management and project intake procedures to systematically update and refine the DR documentation. Don’t save up changes for a year-end blitz, which turns document maintenance into an onerous project.

Summary of accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

• How to create visual-based DRP documentation
• How to integrate DRP maintenance into core IT processes

Processes Optimized

• DRP documentation creation
• DRP publishing tool selection
• DRP documentation maintenance

Deliverables Completed

• DRP documentation
• Strategy for publishing your DRP
• Modified project-intake form
• Change management checklist for DR considerations

Project step summary

Client Project: Document and Maintain Your Disaster Recovery Plan

• Create a recovery workflow.
• Create supporting DRP documentation.
• Write a summary for your DRP.
• Decide on a publishing strategy.
• Incorporate DRP maintenance into core IT processes.
• Conduct an annual focused review.

Info-Tech Insight

This project has the ability to fit the following formats:

• Onsite workshop by Info-Tech Research Group consulting analysts.
• Do-it-yourself with your team.
• Remote delivery (Info-Tech Guided Implementation).

Related Info-Tech research

Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan
Close the gap between your DR capabilities and service continuity requirements.

Reduce Costly Downtime Through DR Testing
Improve the accuracy of your DRP and your team’s ability to efficiently execute recovery procedures through regular DR testing.

Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind
Go beyond satisfying auditors to drive process improvement, consistent IT operations, and effective knowledge transfer.

Prepare for a DRP Audit
Assess your current DRP maturity, identify required improvements, and complete an audit-ready DRP summary document.

Bibliography

A Structured Approach to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and the Requirements of ISO 31000. The Association of Insurance and Risk Managers, Alarm: The Public Risk Management Association, and The Institute of Risk Management, 2010.

“APO012: Manage Risk.” COBIT 5: Enabling Processes. ISACA, 2012.

Bird, Lyndon, Ian Charters, Mel Gosling, Tim Janes, James McAlister, and Charlie Maclean-Bristol. Good Practice Guidelines: A Guide to Global Good Practice in Business Continuity. Global ed. Business Continuity Institute, 2013.

COBIT 5: A Business Framework for the Governance and Management of Enterprise IT. ISACA, 2012.

“EDM03: Ensure Risk Optimisation.” COBIT 5: Enabling Processes. ISACA, 2012.

Risk Management. ISO 31000:2009.

Rothstein, Philip Jan. Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan. Rothstein Associates: 1 Oct. 2007.

Societal Security – Business continuity management systems – Guidance. ISO 22313:2012.

Societal Security – Business continuity management systems – Requirements. ISO 22301:2012.

Understanding and Articulating Risk Appetite. KPMG, 2008.

Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Technology has never been more important to organizations, and as a result, recruiting and retaining quality IT employees is increasingly difficult.

• IT unemployment rates continue to hover below 2% in the US.
• The IT talent market has evolved into one where the employer is the seller and the employee is the buyer.

Common Obstacles

• While the number of jobs in IT has increased dramatically, the percentage of women in IT has progressed disproportionately, with only 25% of IT jobs being held by women.*
• The challenge is not a lack of talented women with the competencies to excel within IT, but rather organizations lack an effective strategy to recruit and retain women in IT.

Info-Tech’s Approach

To stay competitive, IT leaders need to radically change the way they recruit and retain talent, and women in IT represent one of the largest untapped markets. CIOs need a targeted strategy to attract and retain the best, and this requires a shift in how leaders currently manage the talent lifecycle. Info-Tech offers a targeted solution to help:

• Build a Recruitment Playbook: Leverage Info-Tech tools to effectively sell to, search for, and secure top talent.
• Build a Retention Strategy: Follow Info-Tech’s step-by-step process to identify initiatives and opportunities to retain your top talent.

Info-Tech Insight

Retaining and attracting top women is good business, not personal. Companies with greater gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability.1 In the war on talent, having a strategy around how you will recruit and retain women in IT is Marketing 101. What influences whether women apply for roles and stay at organizations is different than men; traditional models won’t cut it.

*– McKinsey & Company, 2020; 2 – CIO From IDG, 2021

Diversity & inclusion – it’s good business, not personal

Why should organizations care about diversity?

1. The war for talent is real. Every CIO needs a plan of attack. Unemployment rates are dropping and 54% of CIOs report that the skills shortage is holding them up from meeting their strategic objectives.

Source: Harvey Nash and KPMG, 2020

2. Diversity has clear ROI – both in terms of recruitment and retention. Eighty percent of technology managers experienced increased turnover in 2021. Not only are employee tenures decreasing, the competition for talent is fierce and the average cost of turnover is 150% of an IT worker’s salary.

Source: Robert Half, 2021

3. Inability to recruit and retain talent will reduce business satisfaction. Organizations who are continuously losing talent will be unable to meet corporate objectives due to lost productivity, keeping them in firefighting mode. An engaged workforce is a requirement for driving innovation and project success.

ISACA’s 2020 study shows a disconnect between what men and women think is being done to recruit and retain female employees

Key findings from ISACA’s 2020 Tech Workforce survey

65% of men think their employers have a program to encourage hiring women. But only 51% of women agree.

71% of men believe their employers have a program to encourage the promotion or advancement of women. But only 59% of women agree.

49% of women compared to 44% of men in the survey feel they must work harder than their peers.

22% of women compared to 14% of men feel they are underpaid.

66% of women compared to 72% of men feel they are receiving sufficient resources to sustain their career.

30% of women compared to 23% of men feel they have unequal growth opportunities.

74% of women compared to 64% of men feel they lack confidence to negotiate their salaries.

To see ISACA’s full report click here.

Image: Statista, 2021, CC BY-ND 4.0

The chart to the left, compiled by Statista, (based on self-reported company figures) shows that women held between 23% to 25% of the tech jobs at major tech companies.

Women are also underrepresented in leadership positions: 34% at Facebook, 31% at Apple, 29% at Amazon, 28% at Google, and 26% at Microsoft.

(Statista, 2021)

To help support women in tech, 78% of women say companies should promote more women into leadership positions. Other solutions include:

• Providing mentorship opportunities (72%)
• Offering flexible scheduling (64%)
• Conducting unconscious bias training (57%)
• Offering equal maternity and paternity leave (55%)

(HRD America, 2021)

Traditional retention initiatives target the majority – the drivers that impact the retention of women in IT are different

Ranked correlation of impact of engagement drivers on retention

* Recent data stays consistent, but, the importance of compensation and recognition in retaining women in IT is increasing.

Info-Tech Research Group Employee Engagement Diagnostic; N=1,856 IT employees

The majority of organizations take a one-size-fits-all approach to retaining and engaging employees.

However, studies show that women are leaving IT in significantly higher proportions than men and that the drivers impacting men’s and women’s retention are different. Knowing how men and women react differently to engagement drivers will help you create a targeted retention strategy.

In particular, to increase the retention and engagement of women, organizations should develop targeted initiatives that focus on:

• Organizational culture
• Employee empowerment
• Manager relationships

Why organizations need to focus on the recruitment and retention of women in IT

1. Women expand the talent pool. Women represent a vast, untapped talent pool that can bolster the technical workforce. Unfortunately, traditional IT recruitment processes are targeted toward a limited IT profile – the key to closing the IT skills gap is to look for agile learners and expand your search criteria to cast a larger net.
2. Diversity increases innovation opportunities. Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than homogenous groups, and the presence of women is more likely to increase the problem-solving and creative abilities of the group.
3. Women increase your ROI. Research shows that companies with the highest representation of women in their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment than those with few or no women. Further, organizations who are unable to retain top women in their organization are at risk for not being able to deliver to SLAs or project expectations and lose the institutional knowledge needed for continuous improvement.

Source: Bureau of Labour Statistics; Info-Tech Research Group/McLean & Company Analysis

Improving the representation of women in your organization requires rethinking recruitment and retention strategies

Info-Tech’s approach to improving gender diversity at your organization

Info-Tech takes a practical, tactical approach to improving gender diversity at organizations, which starts with straightforward tactics that will help you improve the recruitment and retention of women in your organization.

How we can help

1. Leverage Info-Tech’s tools to define your current challenges and opportunities for gender diversity to improve your recruitment and retention issues.
2. Employ straightforward and tested tactics to increase talent acquisition of women in IT by optimizing how you sell to, search for, and secure top female talent.
3. Take a data-driven approach to measure and increase the retention and engagement of women within your IT organization, and know how and when to involve your staff for optimal results.

Leverage Info-Tech’s customizable deliverables to improve the recruitment and retention of women in your organization

RECRUIT Top Women in IT

If you don’t have a targeted recruitment strategy for women, you are missing out on 50% of the candidate pool. Increase the number of viable candidates by leveraging best practices to sell to, search for, and secure top women in IT.

Key metrics to track:

• Average number of female candidates per posting
• Average time to fill position
• Percentage of new hires still at the organization one year later

RETAIN Top Women in IT

The drivers that impact the retention of men and women are different. Take a data-driven approach to improving retention of women in your organization by using best practices to measure and improve employee engagement.

Key metrics to track:

• Voluntary turnover rates of men and women
• Average tenure of men and women
• Percentage of internal promotions going to men and women
• Employee engagement scores

Info-Tech’s methodology for Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our teams knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is 6 calls over the course of 1 to 2 months.

1. Tactics to Recruit More Women in IT

Call #1: Develop a strategy to better sell your organization to diverse candidates.

Call #2: Evaluate your candidate search practices to reach a wider audience.

Call #3: Introduce best practices in your interviews to improve the candidate experience and limit bias.

2. Tactics to Retain More Women in IT

Call #4: Launch focus groups to improve performance of key retention drivers.

Call #5: Measure the employee experience and identify key moments that matter to staff.

Call #6: Conduct stay interviews and establish actions to improve retention.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

Phase 1

• 1.1 Sell
• 1.2 Search
• 1.3 Secure

Phase 2

• 2.1 Engagement
• 2.2 Employee Experience
• 2.3 Stay Interviews

Consider key factors within the recruitment process

Key Talent Pipeline Opportunities:

• In today’s talent landscape IT leaders need to be highly strategic about how they recruit new talent to the organization.
• IT professionals have a huge number of options to choose from when considering their next career.
• IT leaders need to actively market and expand their search to attract top talent. The “where” and “how” to recruit men and women in IT are different and your strategy should reflect this.
• Partnering with your HR department to help you improve the number of applicants, expand your search criteria, and optimize the interview experience will all directly impact your talent pipeline.

1. Sell

How do you position the value of working for your organization and roles in a meaningful way?

2. Search

How can you expand your key search criteria and sourcing strategies to reach more candidates?

3. Secure

How can you reduce bias in your interview process and create positive candidate experiences?

Info-Tech’s Sell-Search-Secure recruitment model

Follow these steps to increase your pool of female candidates.

1. Sell Tactics:

1. Develop an employee value proposition that will attract female candidates.

2. Understand how your job postings may be deterring female candidates.

2. Search Tactics:

3. Identify opportunities to expand your role analysis for job requisitions.

4. Increase your candidate pool by expanding sourcing programs.

3. Secure Tactics:

5. Identify tactics to improve women’s interview experience.

6. Leverage behavioral interview questions to limit bias in interviews.

Please note, this section is not a replacement or a full talent strategy. Rather, this blueprint will highlight key tactics within talent acquisition practices that the IT leadership team can help to influence to drive greater diversity in recruitment.

Understand where leaks exist in your talent pipeline

Start your recruitment enhancement here.

Work with your HR department to track critical metrics around where you need to make improvements and where you can partner with your recruitment team to improve your recruitment process and build a more diverse pipeline. Identify where you have significant drops or variation in diversity or overall need and select where you’d like to focus your recruitment improvement efforts.

Enhance your recruitment strategies

The way you position the organization impacts who is likely to apply to posted positions. Ensure you are putting a competitive foot forward by developing a unique, meaningful, and aspirational employee value proposition and clear job descriptions.

Sell the organization

What is an employee value proposition?

An employee value proposition (EVP) is a unique and clearly defined set of attributes and benefits that capture an employee’s overall work experience within an organization. An EVP is your opportunity to showcase the unique benefits and opportunities of working at your organization, allowing you to attract a wider pool of candidates.

How is an employee value proposition used?

Your EVP should be used internally and externally to promote the unique benefits of working within the department. As a recruiting tool, you can use it to attract candidates, highlighting the benefits of working for your organization. The EVP is often highlighted where you are most likely to reach your target audience, whether that is through social media, in-person events, or in other advertising activities.

Why tailor this to multiple audiences?

While your employee value proposition should remain constant in terms of the unique benefits of working for your organization, you want to ensure that the EVP appeals to multiple audiences and that it is backed up by relevant stories that support how your organization lives your EVP every day. Candidates need to be able to relate to the EVP and see it as desirable, so ensuring that it is relatable to a diverse audience is key.

Develop a strong employee value proposition

Three key steps

1. Build and Assess the EVP

Assess your existing employee value proposition and/or build a forward-looking, meaningful, authentic, aspirational EVP.

2. Test the EVP

Gather feedback from staff to ensure the EVP is meaningful internally and externally.

3. Adopt the EVP

Identify how and where you will leverage the EVP internally and externally, and integrate the EVP into your candidate experience, job ads, and employee engagement initiatives.

As you build your EVP, keep in mind that while it’s important to brand your IT organization as an inclusive workplace to help you attract diverse candidates, be honest about your current level of diversity and your intentions to improve. Otherwise, new recruits will be disappointed and leave.

What is an employee value proposition?

And what are the key components?

The employee value proposition is your opportunity to showcase the unique benefits and opportunities of working at your organization, allowing you to attract a wider pool of candidates.

Creating a compelling EVP that presents a picture of your employee experience, with a focus on diversity, will attract females to your team. This can lead to many internal and external benefits for your organization.

Collect relevant information

Existing Employee Value Proposition: If your organization or IT department has an existing employee value proposition, rather than starting from scratch, we recommend leveraging that and moving to the testing phase to see if the EVP still resonates with staff and external parties.

Employee Engagement Results: If your organization does an employee engagement survey, review the results to identify the areas in which the IT organization is performing well. Identify and document any key comment themes in the report around why employees enjoy working for the organization or what makes your IT department a great place to work.

Social Media Sites. Prepare for the good, the bad, and the ugly. Social media websites like Glassdoor and Indeed make it easier for employees to share their experiences at an organization honestly and candidly. While postings on these sites won’t relate exclusively to the IT department, they do invite participants to identify their department in the organization. You can search these to identify any positive things people are saying about working for the organization and potentially opportunities for improvement (which you can use as a starting point in the retention section of this report).

Step 1.1

Sell – Assess the current state and develop your employee value proposition

Activities

1.1.1 Gather feedback on unique benefits

1.1.2 Build key messages

1.1.3 Test your EVP

1.1.4 Adopt your EVP

1.1.5 Review job postings for gender bias

1.1.1 Gather feedback

1. Hold a series of focus groups with employees to understand what about the organization attracted them to join and to stay at the organization.
2. Start by identifying if you will interview all employees or a subset. If you are going to use a subset, ensure you have at least one male and one female participating from each team and representation of all levels within the department.
3. Print the EVP Interview Guide to focus your conversation, and ask each individual to take 15 minutes and respond to questions 1-3 in the Guide:
4. Draw a quadrant on the board and mark each quadrant with four categories: Day-to-Day Elements, Organizational Elements, Compensation & Benefits, and Working Conditions. Provide each participant with sticky notes and ask them to brainstorm the top five things they value most about working at the organization. Ask them to place each sticky in the appropriate category and identify any key themes.
5. Ask participants to hand in their EVP Interview Guides and document all of the key findings.

Download the EVP Interview Guide

1.1.2 Build key messages

1. Collect all of the information from the various focus groups and begin to build out the employee value proposition statements.
2. Identify the key elements that staff felt were unique and highly valued by employees and group these into common themes.
3. Identify categories that related to one of the five key drivers* of women’s retention in IT and highlight any key elements related to these:

• Culture: The degree to which an employee identifies with the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the organization.
• Company Potential: An employee’s understanding, commitment, and excitement about the organization’s mission and future.
• Employee Empowerment: The degree to which employees have accountability and control over their work within a supported environment.
• Learning and Development: A cooperative and continuous effort to enhance an employee’s skill set and expertise and meet an employee’s career objectives.
• Manager Relationships: The professional and personal relationship an employee has with their manager, including trust, support, and development.

• Examples of great EVPs: L’Oreal, Home Depot

*See Engagement Driver Handout slides for more details on these five drivers.

Quality test your revised EVP

Use Info-Tech’s EVP Scorecard.

Internally and Externally

Use the EVP Scorecard and EVP Scorecard Handout throughout this step to assess your EVP against:

Internal Criteria:

• Accuracy
• Alignment
• Aspirational
• Differentiation

External Criteria:

• Clear
• Compelling
• Concise
• Differentiation

Ensure your EVP resonates with employees and prospects

Test your EVP with internal and external audiences.

1.1.3 Test your EVP

1. Identify the internal and external individuals who you want to gather feedback from about the EVP.
2. For internal candidates, send a copy of the EVP and ask them to complete the Internal Assessment (ensure that you have at least 50% representation of women).
3. For external candidates, identify first how you will reach out to them; popular options are to have team members in key roles reach out to members of their LinkedIn network who are in similar roles to themselves. Request that they look for a diverse group to gather feedback from.
4. Have the external candidates complete the External Assessment.
5. Collect the feedback around the EVP and enter the findings into the EVP Scorecard Tool.
6. If you are dissatisfied with the scorecard results, go back to the employees you interviewed to ask for additional feedback, focusing on the areas that scored low.
7. Incorporate the feedback and present the revised EVP to see if the changes resonate with stakeholders.
8. If you are satisfied with the results, present to the leadership and HR teams for agreement and proceed to adopting the EVP in your organization.

1.1.4 Adopt your EVP

Identify your target audience and marketing channels.

1. Identify the internal and external individuals who you want to gather feedback from about the EVP.

• The target audience for your employee value proposition
• Internal and/or external
• Local, national, international
• Experience
• Applicant pool (e.g. new graduates, professionals, internship)

• Internal: Town hall meetings, fireside chats
• External: Social media, advertising, job postings
• Global: Professional affiliations, head hunters

Case Study

INDUSTRY: Restaurant

SOURCE: McDonald’s Careers, Canadian Business via McLean & Company

McDonald’s saw a divide between employee experience and its vision. McDonald’s set out to reinvent its employer image and create the reputation it wanted.

Challenge

• Historically, McDonald’s has had a challenging employer brand. Founded on the goal of cost effectiveness, a “McJob” was often associated with lower pay and a poor reputation.
• McDonald’s reached out to employees using a global survey and asked, “What is it you love most about working at McDonald’s?”

Solution

• McDonald’s revaluated its employer brand by creating an EVP focused on the three F’s.

1. Future – career growth and development opportunities
2. Flexibility – flexible working hours and job variety
3. Family & Friends – a people-centric work culture

Results

• As a result of developing and promoting its EVP internally, McDonald’s has experienced higher engagement and a steady decrease in turnover.
• Externally, McDonald’s has been recognized numerous times by the Great Place to Work Institute and has been classified by Maclean’s magazine as one of Canada’s top 50 employers for 13 years running.

Make your job descriptions more attractive to female applicants

10 WAYS TO REMOVE GENDER BIAS FROM JOB DESCRIPTIONS – GLASSDOOR – AN EXCERPT

1. USE GENDER-NEUTRAL TITLES: Male-oriented titles can inadvertently prevent women from clicking on your job in a list of search results. Avoid including words in your titles like “hacker,” “rockstar,” “superhero,” “guru,” and “ninja,” and use neutral, descriptive titles like “engineer,” “project manager,” or “developer.
2. CHECK PRONOUNS: When describing the tasks of the ideal candidate, use “they” or “you.” Example: “As Product Manager for XYZ, you will be responsible for setting the product vision and strategy.
3. AVOID (OR BALANCE) YOUR USE OF GENDER-CHARGED WORDS: Analysis from language tool Textio found that the gender language bias in your job posting predicts the gender of the person you’re going to hire. Use a tool like Textio tool or the free Gender Decoder to identify problem spots in your word choices. Examples: “Analyze” and “determine” are typically associated with male traits, while “collaborate” and “support” are considered female. Avoid aggressive language like “crush it.
4. AVOID SUPERLATIVES: Excessive use of superlatives such as “expert,” “superior,” and “world class” can turn off female candidates who are more collaborative than competitive in nature. Research also shows that women are less likely than men to brag about their accomplishments. In addition, superlatives related to a candidate’s background can limit the pool of female applicants because there may be very few females currently in leading positions at “world-class” firms
5. LIMIT THE NUMBER OF REQUIREMENTS: Identify which requirements are “nice to have” versus “must have,” and eliminate the “nice to haves.” Research shows that women are unlikely to apply for a position unless they meet 100 percent of the requirements, while men will apply if they meet 60 percent of the requirements.

For the full article please click here.

1.1.5 Review job postings

To understand potential gender bias

1. Select a job posting that you are looking to fill, review the descriptions, and identify if any of the following apply:

• Are the titles gender neutral? This doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in your naming, but consider if the name really represents the role you are looking to fill.
• Do you use pronouns? If there are instances where the posting says “he” OR “she” change this to “they” or “you.”
• Are you overusing superlatives? Review the posting and ensure that when words like “expert” or “world class” are used that you genuinely need someone who is at that level.
• Are all of the tasks/responsibilities listed the ones that are absolutely essential to the job? Women are less likely to apply if they don’t have direct experience with 100% of the criteria – if it’s a non-essential, consider whether it’s needed in the posting.
• Is there any organization-specific jargon used? Where possible, avoid using organization-specific jargon in order to create an inclusive posting. Avoid using terms/acronyms that are only known to your organization.

Case Study

INDUSTRY: Social Media

SOURCE: Buffer Open blog

When the social media platform Buffer replaced one word in a job posting, it noticed an increase in female candidates.

Challenge

For the social media platform Buffer, all employees were called “hackers.” It had front-end hackers, back-end hackers, Android hackers, iOS hackers, and traction hackers.

As the company began to grow and ramp up hiring, the Chief Technology Officer, Sunil Sadasivan, noticed that Buffer was seeing a very low percentage of female candidates for these “hacker” jobs.

In researching the challenge in lack of female candidates, the Buffer team discovered that the word “hacker” may be just the reason why.

Solution

Understanding that wording has a strong impact on the type of candidates applying to work for Buffer started a great and important conversation on the Buffer team.

Buffer wanted to be as inviting as possible in job listings, especially because it hires for culture fit over technical skill.

Buffer went through a number of wording choices that could replace “hacker,” and ended on the term “developer.” All external roles were updated to reflect this wording change.

Results

By making this slight change to the wording used in their jobs, Buffer went from seeing a less than 2% female representation of applicants for developer jobs to around 12% female representation for the same job.

Step 1.2

Search – Reach more candidates by expanding key search criteria and sourcing strategies

Activities

1.2.1 Complete role analysis

1.2.2 Expand your sourcing pools

Enhance your recruitment strategies

Sourcing shouldn’t start with an open position; it should start with identifying an anticipated need and building and nurturing a talent pipeline. IT participation in this is critical to effectively promote the employee experience and foster relationships before candidates even apply.

Expand your search

What is a candidate sourcing program?

A candidate sourcing program is one element of the overall HR sourcing approach, which consists of the overall process (steps to source talent), the people responsible for sourcing, and the programs (internal talent mobility, social media, employee referral, alumni network, campus recruitment, etc.).

What is a sourcing role analysis?

Part of the sourcing plan will outline how to identify talent for a role, which includes both the role analysis and the market assessment. The market assessment is normally completed by the HR department and consists of analyzing the market conditions as they relate to specific talent needs. The role analysis looks at what is necessary to be successful in a role, including competencies, education, background experience, etc.

How will this enable you to attract female candidates?

Expanding your sourcing programs and supporting deeper role analysis will allow your HR department to reach a larger candidate pool and better understand the type of talent that will be successful in roles within your organization. By expanding from traditional pools and criteria you will open the organization up to a wider variety of talent options.

Minimize bias in sourcing to hire the right talent and protect against risk

Failure to take an inclusive approach to sourcing will limit your talent pool by sidelining entire groups or discouraging applicants from diverse backgrounds. Address bias in sourcing so that diverse candidates are not excluded from the start. Solutions such as removing biographical data from CVs prior to interviews may reduce bias, but they may come too late to impact diversity.

1.2.1 Role analysis

Customize a sourcing plan for key roles to guide talent pipeline creation.

1. Complete a role analysis to understand key role requirements. If you are hiring for an existing role, start by taking an inventory of who your top and low performers are within the role today.
2. Consider your top performers and identify what a successful employee can do better than a less successful one. Start by considering their alignment with job requirements, and identify the education, designations/certifications, and experiences that are necessary for this job. Do not limit yourself; carefully consider if the requirements you are including are actually necessary or just nice to have.

	Required Entry Criteria	Preferred Entry Criteria
Education	University Degree – Bachelors	University Degree – Masters
Experience	5+) years design, or related, experience Experience leading a team	External consulting experience Healthcare industry experience
Designations/Certifications		ITIL Foundations

3. Review Info-Tech’s Job Competency Library in the Workforce Planning Workbook, identify the key competencies that are ideal for this anticipated role, and write a description of how this would manifest in your organization.

Competency	Level of Proficiency	Behavioral Descriptions
Business Analysis	Level 2: Capable	Demonstrates a basic understanding of business roles, processes, planning, and requirements in the organization. Demonstrates a basic understanding of how technologies assist in business processes. Develop basic business cases using internal environment analysis for the business unit level.

4. Hold a meeting with your HR team or recruiter to highlight the types of experience and competencies you are looking for in a hire to expand the search criteria.

Target diverse talent pools through different sources

When looking to diversify your workforce, it’s critical that you look to attract and recruit talent from a variety of different talent pools.

SOURCING APPROACH

INTERNAL MOBILITY PROGRAM

Positioning the right talent in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons, and supporting them appropriately. Often tied to succession or workforce planning, mentorship, and learning and development.

SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM

The widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on common efforts, and build relationships. Think beyond the traditional and consider niche social media platforms.

EMPLOYEE REFERRAL PROGRAM

Employees recommend qualified candidates. If the referral is hired, the referring employee typically receives some sort of reward.

ALUMNI PROGRAM

An alumni referral program is a formalized way to maintain ongoing relationships with former employees of the organization.

CAMPUS RECRUITING PROGRAM

A formalized means of attracting and hiring individuals who are about to graduate from schools, colleges, or universities.

EVENTS & ASSOCIATION PROGRAM

A targeted approach for participation in non-profit associations and industry events to build brand awareness of your organization and create a forward-looking talent pipeline.

1.2.2 Expand your sourcing pools

Increase the number of female applicants.

1. Identify where your employees are currently being sourced from and identify how many female candidates you have gotten from each channel as a percentage of applicants.

	# of Candidates From Approach	% of Female Candidates From Approach	Target # of Female Candidates
Internal Talent Mobility
Social Media Program
Employee Referral Program
Alumni Program
Campus Recruiting Program
Events & Non-Profit Affiliations
Other (job databases, corporate website, etc.)

2. Work with your HR partner or organization’s recruiter to identify three recruitment channels from the list that you will work on expanding.
3. Review the following two slides and identify key success factors for the implementation. Identify what role IT will play and what role HR will play in implementing the approach.
4. Following implementation, monitor the impact of the tactics on the number of women candidates and determine whether to add additional tactics.

Different talent sources

Benefits and success factors of using different talent sources

Enhance your recruitment strategies

Work with your HR department to influence the recruitment process by taking a data-driven approach to understand the root cause of applicant drop-off and success and take corrective actions.

Secure top candidates

Why does the candidate experience matter?

Until recently it was an employer’s market, so recruiters and hiring managers were able to get good talent without courting top candidates. Today, that’s not the case. You need to treat your IT candidates like customers and be mindful that this is often one of the first experiences future staff will have with the organization. It will give them their first real sense of the culture of the organization and whether they want to work for the organization.

What can IT leaders do if they have limited influence over the interview process?

Work with your HR department to evaluate the existing recruitment process, share challenges you’ve experienced, and offer additional support in the process. Identify where you can influence the process and if there are opportunities to build service-level agreements around the candidate experience.

Take a data-driven approach

Understand opportunities to enhance the talent selection process.

While your HR department likely owns the candidate experience and processes, if you have identified challenges in diversity we recommend partnering with your HR department or recruitment team to identify opportunities for improvement within the process. If you are attracting a good amount of candidates through your sell and search tactics but aren’t finding that this is translating into more women selected, it’s time to take a look at your selection processes.

SIMPLIFIED CANDIDATE SELECTION PROCESS STEPS

1. Application Received
2. Candidate Selected for Interview
3. Offer Extended
4. Offer Accepted
5. Onboarding of Staff

To understand the challenges within your selection process, start by baselining your drop-off rates throughout selection and comparing the differences in male and female candidates. Use this to pin point the issues within the process and complete a root-cause analysis to identify where to improve.

Step 1.3

Secure – reduce bias in your interview process and create positive candidate experiences

Activities

1.3.1 Identify selection challenges

1.3.1 Identify your selection challenges

Review your candidate data.

1. Hold a meeting with your HR partner to identify trends in your selection data. If you have an applicant tracking system, pull all relevant information for analysis.
2. Start by identifying the total number of candidates that move forward in each stage of the process. Record the overall number of applicants for positions (should have this number from your sourcing analysis), overall number of candidates selected for interviews, overall number of offers extended, overall number of offers rejected, and overall number of employees still employed after one year.
3. Identify the number of female and male candidates in each of those categories and as a percentage of the total number of applicants.

Selection Process Step	Total # of Candidates	Male Candidates		Female Candidates		% Difference Male & Female
	#	#	% of total	#	% of total
Applicants for Posted Position	150	115	76.7%	35	23.3%	70% fewer females
Selected for Interview
(Selected for Second Interview)
(Selected for Final Interview)
Offer Extended
Offer Rejected
Employees Retained for One Year

4. Identify where there are differences in the percentages of male and female candidates and where there are significant drop-off rates between steps in the process.

Note: For larger organizations, we highly recommend analyzing differences in specific teams/roles and/or at different seniority levels. If you have that data available, repeat the analysis, controlling for those factors.

Root-cause analysis can be conducted in a variety of ways

Align your root-cause analysis technique with the problem that needs to be solved and leverage the skills of the root-cause analysis team.

Brainstorming/Process of Elimination

After brainstorming, identify which possible causes are not the issue’s root cause by removing unlikely causes.

The Five Whys

Use reverse engineering to delve deeper into a recruitment issue to identify the root cause.

Ishikawa/Fishbone Diagram

Use an Ishikawa/fishbone diagram to identify and narrow down possible causes by categories.

Process of elimination

Leveraging root-cause analysis techniques.

Using the process of elimination can be a powerful tool to determine root causes.

• To use the process of elimination to determine root cause, gather the participants from within your hiring team together once you have identified where your issues are within the recruitment process and brainstorm a list of potential causes.
• Like all brainstorming exercises, remember that the purpose is to gather the widest possible variety of perspectives, so be sure not to eliminate any suggested causes out of hand.
• Once you have an exhaustive list of potential causes, you can begin the process of eliminating unlikely causes to arrive at a list of likely potential causes.

Example

Problem: Women candidates are rejecting job offers more consistently

Potential Causes

• The process took too long to complete
• Lack of information about the team and culture
• Candidates aren’t finding benefits/salary compelling
• Lack of clarity on role expectations
• Lack of fit between candidate and interviewers
• Candidates offered other positions
• Interview tactics were negatively perceived

As you brainstorm, ensure that you are identifying differentiators between male and female candidate experiences and rationale. If you ask candidates their rationale for turning down roles, ensure that these are included in the discussion.

The five whys

Leveraging root-cause analysis techniques

Repeatedly asking “why” might seem overly simplistic, but it has the potential to be useful.

• It can be useful, when confronting a problem, to start with the end result and work backwards.
• According to Olivier Serrat, a knowledge management specialist at the Asian Development Bank, there are three key components that define successful use of the five whys: “(i) accurate and complete statements of problems, (ii) complete honesty in answering the questions, and (iii) the determination to get to the bottom of problems and resolve them.”
• As a group, develop a consensus around the problem statement. Go around the room and have each person suggest a potential reason for its occurrence. Repeat the process for each potential reason (ask “why?”) until there are no more potential causes to explore.
• Note: The total number of “whys” may be more or less than five.

Example

Ishikawa/fishbone diagram

Leveraging root-cause analysis techniques.

Use this technique to sort potential causes by category and match them to the problem.

• The first step in creating a fishbone diagram is agreeing on a problem statement and populating a box on the right side of a whiteboard or a piece of chart paper.
• Draw a horizontal line left from the box and draw several ribs on either side that will represent the categories of causes you will explore.
• Label each rib with relevant categories. In the recruitment context, consider cause categories like technology, interview, process, etc. Go around the room and ask, “What causes this problem to happen?” Every result produced should fit into one of the identified categories. Place it there, and continue to brainstorm sub-causes.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Avoid naming individuals in the fishbone diagram. The goal of the root-cause exercise is not to lay blame or zero in on a guilty party but rather to identify how you can rectify any challenges.

Leverage behavioral interviews

Use Info-Tech’s Behavioral Interview Questions Library.

Reduce bias in your interviews.

In the past, companies were pushing the boundaries of the conventional interview, using unconventional questions to find top talent, e.g. “what color is your personality?” The logic was that the best people are the ones who don’t necessarily show perfectly on a resume, and they were intent on finding the best.

However, many companies have stopped using these questions after extensive statistical analysis revealed there was no correlation between candidates’ ability to answer them and their future performance on the job. Hiring by intuition – or “gut” – is usually dependent on an interpersonal connection being developed over a very short period of time. This means that people who were naturally likeable would be given preferential treatment in hiring decisions whether they were capable of doing the job.

Asking behavioral interview questions based on the competency needs of the role is the best way to uncover if the candidates will be able to execute on the job.

For more information see Info-Tech’s Behavioral Interview Question Library.

Improve the level of diversity in your organization by considering inclusive candidate selection practices

Key action items to create inclusivity in your candidate selection practices:

1. Managers must be aware of how bias can influence hiring. Encourage your HR department to provide diversity training for recruiters and hiring managers. Ensure those responsible for recruitment are using best practices, are aware of the impact of unconscious bias, and are making decisions in alignment with your DEI strategy.
2. Use a variety of interviewers to leverage multiple/diverse perspectives. Hiring decisions made by a group can offer a more balanced perspective. Include interviewers from multiple levels in the organization and both men and women.
3. Hire for distinguished excellence. Be careful not to simply choose the same kind of people over and over, in the name of cultural fit (Source: Recruiter.com, 2015).

Broaden the notion of fit:

• Hire for skill fit: you might still hire certain types for a specific job (e.g. analytical types for analysis positions), but these candidates can still be diverse.
• Hire for fit with your organization’s DEI values, regardless of whether the candidate is from a diverse background or not.
• It can be tempting for hiring managers to hire individuals who are similar to themselves. However, doing so limits the amount of diversity entering your organization, and as a result, limits your organization’s ability to innovate.

Leverage a third-party tool

Ensure recruiting and onboarding programs are effective by surveying your new hires.

For a deeper analysis of your new hire processes Info-Tech’s sister company, McLean & Company, is an HR research and advisory firm that offers powerful diagnostics to measure HR processes effectiveness. If you are finding diversity issues to be systemic within the organization, leveraging a diagnostic can greatly improve your processes.

Use this diagnostic to get vital feedback on:

• Recruiting efforts. Find out if your job marketing efforts are successful, which paths your candidates took to find you, and whether your company is maintaining an attractive profile.
• Interviewing process. Ensure candidates experience an organized, professional, and ethical process that accurately sets their expectations for the job.
• Onboarding process. Make sure your new hires are being trained and integrated into their team effectively.
• Organizational culture. Is your culture welcoming and inclusive? You need to know if top talent enjoy the environment you have to offer.

For more information on the New Hire Survey click here. If you are interested in referring your HR partner please contact your account manager.

Phase 2

Enhance Your Retention Strategies

Phase 1

• 1.1 Sell
• 1.2 Search
• 1.3 Secure

Phase 2

• 2.1 Engagement
• 2.2 Employee Experience
• 2.3 Stay Interviews

Actively engage female staff to retain them

Employee engagement: the measurement of effective management practices that create a positive emotional connection between the employee and the organization.

Engaged employees do what’s best for the organization: they come up with product/service improvements, provide exceptional service to customers, consistently exceed performance expectations, and make efficient use of their time and resources. The result is happy customers, better products/services, and saved costs.

Today, what we find is that 54% of women in IT are not engaged,* but…

…engaged employees are: 39% more likely to stay at an organization than employees who are not engaged.*

Additionally, engaging your female staff also has the additional benefit of increasing willingness to innovate by 30% and performance by 28%. The good news is that increasing employee engagement is not difficult, it just requires dedication and an effective toolkit to monitor, analyze, and implement tactics.*

* Info-Tech and McLean & Company Diagnostics; N=1,308 IT employees

Don’t seek to satisfy; drive IT success through engagement

Engagement drivers that impact retention for men and women are different – tailor your strategy to your audience

Ranked correlation of impact of engagement drivers on retention

* Recent data stays consistent, but the importance of compensation and recognition in retaining women in IT is increasing.

Info-Tech Research Group Employee Engagement Diagnostic; N=1,856 IT employees.

An analysis of the differences between men and women in IT’s drivers indicates that women in IT are significantly less likely than men in IT to agree with the following statements:

Culture:

• They identify well with the organization’s values.
• The organization has a very friendly atmosphere.

Employee Empowerment:

• They are given the chance to fully leverage their talents through their job.

Manager Relationships:

• They can trust their manager.
• Their manager cares about them as a person

Working Environment:

• They have not seen incidents of discrimination at their organization based on age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity.

Enhance your retention strategies

Employee engagement is one of the greatest predictors of intention to stay. To retain you need to understand not only engagement but also your employee experience – the moments that matter – and actively work to create a positive experience.

Improve employee engagement

What differentiates an engaged employee?

Engaged employees do what’s best for the organization: they come up with product/service improvements, provide exceptional service to customers, consistently exceed performance expectations, and make efficient use of their time and resources. The result is happy customers, better products/services, and saved costs.

Why measure engagement when looking at retention?

Engaged employees report 39%1 higher intention to stay at the organization than disengaged employees. The cost of losing an employee is estimated to be 150% to 200% of their annual salary.2 Can you afford to not engage your staff?

Why should IT leadership be responsible for their staff engagement?

Engagement happens every day, through every interaction, and needs to be tailored to individual team members to be successful. When engagement is owned by IT leadership, engagement initiatives are incorporated into daily experiences and personalized to their employees based on what is happening in real time. It is this active, dynamic leadership that inspires ongoing employee engagement and differentiates those who talk about engagement from those who succeed in engaging their teams.

Sources: 1 - McLean & Company Employee Engagement Survey, 2 - Gallup, 2019

Step 2.1

Improve employee engagement

Activities

2.1.1 Review employee engagement results and trends

2.1.2 Focus on areas that impact retention of women

Take a data-driven approach

Info-Tech’s employee engagement diagnostics are low-effort, high-impact programs that will give you detailed report cards on the organization’s engagement levels. Use these insights to understand your employees’ engagement levels by a variety of core demographics.

For the purpose of improving retention of women in IT, we encourage you to leverage the EXM tool, which will allow you to track how this demographic group’s engagement changes as you implement new initiatives.

Engagement survey

For a detailed breakdown of staff overall engagement priorities.

Overall Engagement Results

• A clear breakdown of employee engagement results by demographic, gender, and team.
• Detailed engagement breakdown and benchmarking.

Priority Matrix and Driver Scores

• A priority matrix specific to your organization.
• A breakdown of question scores by priority matrix quadrant.
• Know what not to focus your effort on – not all engagement drivers will have a high impact on engagement.

EXM dashboard

Reporting to track engagement in real time.

EXM Dashboard

• Leverage Info-Tech’s real-time Employee Experience Monitor dashboard to track your team’s engagement levels over time.
• Track changes in the number of supporters and detractors and slice the data by roles, teams, and gender.

Time Series Trends

• As you implement new initiatives to improve the engagement and retention of staff, track their impact and continuously course correct.
• Empower your leaders to actively manage their team culture to drive innovation, retention, and productivity.

Start your diagnostic now

Leverage your Info-Tech membership to seamlessly launch your employee engagement survey.

Info-Tech’s dedicated team of program managers will facilitate this diagnostic program remotely, providing you with a convenient, low-effort, high-impact experience.

We will guide you through the process with your goals in mind to deliver deep insight into your successes and areas to improve.

Start Now

2.1.1 Review employee engagement results

Identify trends

1. In a call with one of Info-Tech’s executive advisors, review the results of your employee engagement survey.
2. Identify which departments are most and least engaged and brainstorm some high-level reasons.
3. Review the demographic information and highlight any inconsistencies or areas with high levels of variance. Document which demographics have the most and least engaged, disengaged, and indifferent employees.
4. With help from the Info-Tech executive advisor, identify and document any dramatic differences in the demographic data, particularly around gender.
5. Identify if the majority of issues effecting engagement are at an organization or department level and which stakeholders you need to engage to support the process moving forward.
6. Identify next steps.

2.1.2 Focus on areas that impact retention of women

Hold focus groups with IT staff and focus on the five areas with the greatest impact on women’s retention.

1. Review the handout slides on the following pages to get a better understanding of the definition of each of the top five drivers impacting women’s retention. Depending on your team’s size, pick one to three drivers to focus on for your first focus group.
2. Divide the participants into teams and on flip chart paper or using sticky notes have the teams brainstorm what you can stop/start/continue doing to help you improve on your assigned driver.

• Continue: actions that work for the team related to this driver and should proceed.
• Start: actions/initiatives that the team would like to begin.
• Stop: actions/initiatives that the team would like to stop.

Culture

Engagement driver handout

Culture: The degree to which an employee identifies with the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the organization.

Questions:

• I identify well with the organization’s values.
• This organization has a collaborative work environment.
• This organization has a very friendly atmosphere.
• I am a fit for the organizational culture.

Ranked Correlation of Impact of Engagement Driver on Retention:

• Women in IT: #1
• Men in IT: #2

Company Potential

Engagement driver handout

Company Potential: An employee’s understanding of and commitment to the organization’s mission, and the employee’s excitement about the organization’s mission and future.

Questions:

• This organization has a bright future.
• I am impressed with the quality of people at this organization.
• People in this organization are committed to doing high-quality work.
• I believe in the organization’s overall business strategy.
• This organization encourages innovation.

Ranked Correlation of Impact of Engagement Driver on Retention:

• Women in IT: #2
• Men in IT: #1

Employee Empowerment

Engagement driver handout

Employee Empowerment: The degree to which employees have accountability and control over their work within a supported environment.

Questions:

• I am not afraid of trying out new ideas in my job.
• If I make a suggestion to improve something in my department I believe it will be taken seriously.
• I am empowered to make decisions about how I do my work.
• I clearly understand what is expected of me on the job.
• I have all the tools I need to do a great job.
• I am given the chance to fully leverage my talents through my job.

Ranked Correlation of Impact of Engagement Driver on Retention:

• Women in IT: #3
• Men in IT: #6

Learning and Development

Engagement driver handout

Learning and Development: A cooperative and continuous effort between an employee and the organization to enhance an employee’s skill set and expertise and meet an employee’s career objectives and the organization’s needs.

Questions:

• I can advance my career in this organization.
• I am encouraged to pursue career development activities.
• In the last year, I have received an adequate amount of training.
• In the last year, the training I have received has helped me do my job better.

Ranked Correlation of Impact of Engagement Driver on Retention:

• Women in IT: #4
• Men in IT: #5

Manager Relationships

Engagement driver handout

Manager Relationships: The professional and personal relationship an employee has with their manager. Manager relationships depend on the trust that exists between these two individuals and the extent that a manager supports and develops the employee.

Questions:

• My manager inspires me to improve.
• My manager provides me with high-quality feedback.
• My manager helps me achieve better results.
• I trust my manager.
• My manager cares about me as a person.
• My manager keeps me well informed about decisions that affect me.

Ranked Correlation of Impact of Engagement Driver on Retention:

• Women in IT: #5
• Men in IT: #11

Step 2.2

Examine employee experience

Activities

2.2.1 Identify moments that matter

Understand why and when employees plan to depart

Leverage “psychology of quitting” expertise.

Train your managers to provide them with the skills and expertise to recognize the warning signs of an employee’s departure and know how to re-engage and retain them.

• The majority of resignations are not spur of the moment. They are the result of a compilation of events over a period of time. Normally, these instances are magnified by a stimulant. The final straw or the breaking point drives the employee to make a change. In fact, it has been estimated that a shock jumpstarts 65% of departures.*
  • These shocks could be a lack of promotion, loss of privilege or development opportunity, or a quarrel with a manager.
• Employees rarely leave right away. Most wait until they have confirmed a new job opportunity before leaving. This creates a window in which you can reengage and retain them.
• The majority of employees show signs that they are beginning to think of leaving. Whether that is leaving immediately, putting in the bare minimum of effort, or job searching online at work. Train your managers to know the signs and to keep an eye out for potentially dissatisfied and searching employees.*
• It is easier and less costly to reengage an employee than to start the hiring process from the beginning.

*Source: The Career Café, 2017

Examine employee experience (EX)

Look beyond engagement drivers to drive retention.

Employee experience (EX) is the employee’s perception of their cumulative lived experiences with the organization. It is gauged by how well the employee’s expectations are met within the parameters of the workplace, especially by the “moments that matter” to them. Individual employee engagement is the outcome of a strong overall EX.

Drive a positive employee experience

Identify moments that matter.

Moments that matter are defining pieces or periods in an employee’s experience that create a critical turning point or memory that is of significant importance to them.

These are moments that dramatically change the path of the emotional journey, influence the quality of the final outcome, or end the journey prematurely.

To identify the moment that matters look for significant drops in the emotional journey that your organization needs to improve or significant bumps that your organization can capitalize on. Look for these drops or bumps in the journey and take stock of everything you have recorded at that point in the process. To improve the experience, analyze the hidden needs and how they are or aren’t being met.

Info-Tech Insight

The moment that matters is key and it could be completely separate from organizational life, like the death of a family member. Leaders can more proactively address these moments that matter by identifying them and determining how to make the touchpoint at that moment more impactful.

2.2.1 Identify moments that matter

1. Review your Employee Experience Monitor weekly trends by logging into your dashboard and clicking on “Time Series Trends.”
2. With your management team, identify any weekly trends where your Employee Experience Score has seen changes in the number of detractor, passive, or promoter responses.
3. For each significant change identify:

• Increase in promoters or decrease in detractors:
• What can we do to duplicate positive moments that occurred this week?
• What did I do as a leader to create positive employee experiences?
• What happened in the organization that created a positive employee experience?
• Increase in detractors or decrease in promoters:
• What difficult change was delivered this week?
• What about this change was negatively perceived?
• During the difficult situation how did we as a leadership team support our staff?
• Who did we engage and recognize during the difficult situation?
• Was this situation a one-off issue or is this likely to occur again?

• How did you promote a positive culture and friendly atmosphere?
• How did you empower female staff to leverage their talents?
• How did you interact with staff?
• How did you promote a positive work environment? Where did you see bias in decisions?

Measured benefits of positive employee experience

Positive employee experiences lead to engaged employees, and engaged employees are eight times more likely to recommend the organization (McLean & Company Employee Engagement Database, 2017; N=74,671).

Retention

Employees who indicate they are having a positive experience at work have a 52% higher level of intent to stay (Great Place To Work Institute, 2021)

The bottom line

Organizations that make employee experience a focus have: 23% higher profitability 10% higher customer loyalty (Achievers, 2021)

Case Study

INDUSTRY: Post-Secondary Education

SOURCE: Adam Grant, “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior”

The future is here! Is your data architecture practice ready?

Challenge

A university call center, tasked with raising scholarship money from potential donors, had high employee turnover and low morale.

Solution

A study led by Grant arranged for a test group of employees to meet and interact with a scholarship recipient. In the five-minute meeting, employees learned what the student was studying.

Results

Demonstrating the purpose behind their work had significant returns. Employees who had met with the student demonstrated:

More than two times longer “talk time” with potential donors.

A productivity increase of 400%: the weekly average in donations went from $185.94 to $503.22 for test-group employees.

Enhance your retention strategies

Do not wait until employees leave to find out what they were unhappy with or why they liked the organization. Instead, perform stay interviews with top and core talent to create a holistic understanding of what they are perceiving and feeling.

Conduct stay interviews

What is a stay interview?

A stay interview is a conversation with current employees. It should be performed on a yearly basis and is an informal discussion to generate deeper insight into the employee’s opinions, perspectives, concerns, and complaints. Stay interviews can have a multitude of uses. In this project they will be used to understand why top and core talent chose to stay with the organization to ensure that organizations understand and build upon their current strengths.

When should you do stay interviews?

We recommend completing stay interviews at least on an annual, if not quarterly, basis to truly understand how staff are feeling about the organization and their job, why they stay at the organization, and what would cause them to leave. Couple the outcomes of these interviews with employee engagement action planning to ensure that you are able to address talent needs.

Step 2.3

Conduct stay interviews and learn why employees stay

Activities

2.3.1 Conduct stay interviews

Conduct regular “stay” or “retention” interviews

Build stay interviews into the regular routine. By incorporating stay interviews into your schedule, they are more likely to stick. This regularity provides several advantages:

1. Ensures that retention issues do not take you by surprise. With a finger on the pulse of the organization you will be aware of potential issues.
2. Acts as a supplement to the engagement survey by providing additional information and context for the current level of emotion within the organization.
3. Begins to build a wealth of information that can be analyzed to identify themes and trends. This can be used to track whether the reasons why individuals stay are consistent or if are they changing. This will ensure that the retention strategy remains up to date.

Stay interview best practices:

• Ideally is performed by managers, but can be performed by HR.
• Ideally completed by managers as they are more familiar with their employees, have a greater reach, can hold meetings in a more informal setting, and will receive information first hand.
• If conducted by managers, it’s a best practice to ensure that there is a central repository of themes so that you can identify if there are any trends in the responses, that consistent questions are asked, and that all of the information is in one place
• Should be an informal conversation.
• Should be conducted in a non-critical time in the business year.
• Ask three types of questions:
• What do you enjoy about working here?
• What would you change about your working environment?
• What would encourage or force you to leave the organization?
• Interview a diverse employee base:
• Demographics
• Role
• Performance level
• Location

Source: Talent Management & HT, 2013

Leverage stay interviews

Use Info-Tech’s Stay Interview Guide.

Proactively identify opportunities to drive retention.

The Stay Interview Guide helps managers conduct interviews with current employees, enabling the manager to understand:

• The employee's current engagement level.
• The employee's satisfaction with current role and responsibilities.
• Suggestions for potential improvements.
• An employee's intent to stay with the organization.

Use this template to help you understand how you can best engage your employees and identify any challenges, in terms of moments that mattered, that negatively impacted their intention to stay at the organization.

2.3.1 Conduct stay interviews

1. If you are using the Employee Experience Monitor, prepare for your stay interviews by reviewing your results and identifying if there have been any changes in the results over the previous six weeks. Identify which demographics have the highest and lowest engagement levels – and identify any changes in experience between different demographics.
2. Identify a meeting schedule and cadence that seems appropriate for your stay interviews. For example, you likely will not do all staff at the same time and it may be beneficial to space out your meetings throughout the year. Select a candidate for your first stay interview and invite them for a one-on-one meeting. If it’s unusual for you to meet with this employee, we recommend providing some light context around the rationale, such as that you are looking for opportunities to strengthen the organizational culture and better understand how you can improve retention and engagement at the organization.
3. Download the Stay Interview Template, review all of the questions beforehand, and identify the key questions that you want to ask in the meeting.

• TIP: Even though this is called a “stay interview,” really it should be more of a conversation, and certainly not an interrogation. Know the questions you want to ask, and ask your staff member if it’s ok if you jot down some notes. It may even be beneficial to have the meeting outside of the office, over lunch, or out for coffee.

Download the Stay Interview Guide

Ten tips for best managing stay interviews

Although stay interviews are meant to be informal, you should schedule them as you would any other meeting. Simply invite the employee for a chat.

1. Step out of the office if possible. Opt for your local coffee shop, a casual lunch destination, or another public but informal location.
2. Keep the conversation short, no more than 15 to 20 minutes. If there are any areas of concern that you think warrant action, ask the employee if they would like to discuss them another time. Suggest another meeting to delve deeper into specific issues.
3. Be clear about the purpose of the conversation. Stay interviews are not performance reviews.
4. Focus on what you can do for them. Ask about the employee’s preferences when it comes to feedback and communication (frequency, method, etc.) as well as development (preferences around methods, e.g. coaching or rotations, and personal goals).
5. Be positive. Ask your employee what they like about their job and use positively framed questions.
6. Ask about what they like doing. People enjoy talking about what they like to do. Ask employees about the talents and skills they would like to incorporate into their work duties.
7. Show that you’re listening – paraphrase, ask for clarification, and use appropriate gestures.
8. Refrain from taking notes during the meeting to preserve a conversational atmosphere.
9. Pay attention to the employee’s body language and tone. If it appears that they are uncomfortable talking to you, stop the interview or pause to let them collect themselves.
10. Be open to suggestions, but remember that you can’t control everything. If the employee brings up issues that are beyond your control, tell them that you will do all you can to improve the situation but can’t guarantee anything.

Related Info-Tech Research

Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT

• To stay competitive, IT leaders need to be more involved and commit to a plan to recruit and retain people of color in their departments and organizations. A diverse team is an answer to innovation that can differentiate your company.
• Treat recruiting and retaining a diverse team as a business challenge that requires full engagement. Info-Tech offers a targeted solution that will help IT leaders build a plan to attract, recruit, engage, and retain people of color.

Recruit Top IT Talent

• Changing workforce dynamics and increased transparency have shifted the power from employers to job seekers, stiffening the competition for talent.
• Candidate expectations match high consumer expectations and affect the employer brand, the consumer brand, and overall organizational reputation. Delivering a positive candidate experience (CX2) is no longer optional.

Acquire the Right Hires with Effective Interviewing

• Talk is cheap. Hiring isn’t.
• Gain insight into and understand the need for a strong interview process.
• Strategize and plan your interview process.
• Understand various hiring scenarios and how an interview process may be modified to reflect your organization’s scenario.

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Define Service Desk Metrics That Matter

Look beyond benchmarks and rely on internal metrics to drive success.

Analyst Perspective

Don’t get paralyzed by benchmarks when establishing metrics

When establishing a suite of metrics to track, it’s tempting to start with the metrics measured by other organizations. Naturally, benchmarking will enter the conversation. While benchmarking is useful, measuring you organization against others with a lack of context will only highlight your failures. Furthermore, benchmarks will highlight the norm or common practice. It does not necessarily highlight best practice.

Keeping the limitations of benchmarking in mind, establish your own metrics suite with action-based metrics. Define the audience, cadence, and actions for each metric you track and pair them with business goals. Measure only what you need to.

Slowly improve your metrics process over time and analyze your environment using your own data as your benchmark.

Benedict Chang

Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Measure the business value provided by the service desk.
• Consolidate your metrics and assign context and actions to ones currently tracked.
• Establish tension metrics to see and tell the whole story.
• Split your metrics for each stakeholder group. Assign proper cadences for measurements as a first step to building an effective dashboard or effective dashboards.

Common Obstacles

• Becoming too focused on benchmarks or unidimensional metrics (e.g. cost, first-contact resolution, time to resolve) can lead to misinterpretation of the data and poorly informed actions.
• Sifting through the many sources of data post hoc can lead to stalling in data analysis or slow reaction times to poor metrics.
• Dashboards can quickly become cluttered with uninformative metrics, thus reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of meaningful data.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Use metrics that drive productive change and improvement. Track only what you need to report on.
• Ensure each metric aligns with the desired business goal, is action-based, and includes the answers to what, why, how, and who.
• Establish internal benchmarks by analyzing the trends from your own data to set baselines.
• Act on the results of your metrics by adjusting targets and measuring success.

Info-Tech Insight

Identify the metrics that serve a real purpose and eliminate the rest. Establish a formal review process to ensure metrics are still valid, continue to provide the answers needed, and are at a manageable and usable level.

Improve your metrics to align IT with strategic business goals

The right metrics can tell the business how hard IT works and how well they perform.

• Only 19% of CXOs feel that their organization is effective at measuring the success of IT projects with their current metrics.
• Implementing the proper metrics can facilitate communication between the business division and IT practice.
• The proper metrics can help IT know what issues the business has and how the CEO and CIO should tackle them.
• If the goals above resonate with your organization, our blueprint Take Control of Infrastructure and Operations Metrics will take you through the right steps.

Current Metrics Suite

19% Effective

36% Some Improvement Necessary

45% Significant Improvement Necessary

Source: Info-Tech Research Group’s CEO/CIO Alignment Diagnostic, 2019; N=622

CXOs stress that value is the most critical area for IT to improve in reporting

• You most likely have to improve your metrics suite by addressing business value.
• Over 80% of organizations say they need improvement to their business value metrics, with 32% of organizations reporting that significant improvement is needed.
• Of course, measuring metrics for service desk operations is important, but don’t forget business-oriented metrics such as measuring knowledgebase articles written for shift-left enablement, cost (time and money) of service desk tickets, and overall end-user satisfaction.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group’s CEO/CIO Alignment Diagnostic, 2019; N=622

Benchmarking used in isolation will not tell the whole story

Benchmarks can be used as a step in the metrics process

They can be the first step to reach an end goal, but if benchmarks are observed in isolation, it will only highlight your failures.

Benchmarking relies on standardized models

This does not account for all the unique variables that make up an IT organization.

For example, benchmarks that include cost and revenue may include organizations that prioritize first-call resolution (FCR), but the variables that make up this benchmark model will be quite different within your own organization.

Info-Tech Insight

Benchmarks reflect the norm and common practice, not best practice.

Benchmarks are open to interpretation

Taking the time to establish proper metrics is often more valuable time spent than going down the benchmark rabbit hole.

Being above or below the norm is neither a good nor a bad thing.

Determining what the results mean for you depends on what’s being measured and the unique factors, characteristics, and priorities in your organization.

If benchmark data is a priority within your IT organization, you may look up organizations like MetricNet, but keep the following in mind:

Review the collected benchmark data

See where IT organizations in your industry typically stand in relation to the overall benchmark.

Assess the gaps

Large gaps between yourself and the overall benchmark could indicate areas for improvement or celebration. Use the data to focus your analysis, develop deeper self-awareness, and prioritize areas for potential concern.

Benchmarks are only guidelines

The benchmark source data may not come from true peers in every sense. Each organization is different, so always explore your unique context when interpreting any findings.

Rely on internal metrics to measure and improve performance

Measure internal metrics over time to define goals and drive real improvement

• Internally measured metrics are more reliable because they provide information about your actual performance over time. This allows for targeted improvements and objective measurements of your milestones.
• Whether a given metric is the right one for your service desk will depend on several different factors, including:
  • The maturity and capability of your service desk processes
  • The volume of service requests and incidents
  • The complexity of your environment when resolving tickets
  • The degree to which your end users are comfortable with self-service

Take Info-Tech’s approach to metrics management

Use metrics that drive productive change and improvement. Track only what you need to report on.

Ensure each metric aligns with the desired business goal, is action-based, and includes the answers to what, why, how, and who.

Establish internal benchmarks by analyzing the trends from your own data to set baselines.

Act on the results of your metrics by adjusting targets and measuring success.

Define action-based metrics to cut down on analysis paralysis

Every metric needs to be backed with the following criteria:

• Defining audience, cadence, goal, and action for each metric allows you to keep your tracked metrics to a minimum while maximizing the value.
• The audience and cadence of each metric may allow you to define targeted dashboards.

Audience - Who is this metric tracked for?

Goal - Why are you tracking this metric? This can be defined along with the CSFs and KPIs.

Cadence - How often are you going to view, analyze, and action this metric?

Action - What will you do if this metric spikes, dips, trends up, or trends down?

Activity 1. Define your critical success factors and key performance indicators

Critical success factors (CSFs) are high-level goals that help you define the direction of your service desk. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be treated as the trend of metrics that will indicate that you are moving in the direction of your CSFs. These will help narrow the data you have to track and action (metrics).

CSFs, or your overall goals, typically revolve around three aspects of the service desk: time spent on tickets, resources spent on tickets, and the quality of service provided.

1. As a group, brainstorm the CSFs and the KPIs that will help narrow your metrics. Use the Service Desk Metrics Workbook to record the results.
2. Look at the example to the right as a starting point.

Example metrics:

Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook

Activity 2. Define action-based metrics that align with your KPIs and CSFs

1. Now that you have defined your goals, continue to fill the workbook by choosing metrics that align with those goals.
2. Use the chart below as a guide. For every metric, define the cadence of measurement, audience of the metric, and action associated with the metric. There may be multiple metrics for each KPI.
3. If you find you are unable to define the cadence, audience, or action associated with a metric, you may not need to track the metric in the first place. Alternatively, if you find that you may action a metric in the future, you can decide to start gathering data now.

Example metrics:

Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook

Activity 3. Define the data ownership, metric viability, and dashboards

1. For each metric, define where the data is housed. Ideally, the data is directly in the ticketing tool or ITSM tool. This will make it easy to pull and analyze.
2. Determine how difficult the metric will be to pull or track. If the effort is high, decide if the value of tracking the metric is worth the hassle of gathering it.
3. Lastly, for each metric, use the cadence and audience to place the metric in a reporting dashboard. This will help divide your metrics and make them easier to report and action.
4. You may use the output of this exercise to add your tracked metrics to your service desk SOP.
5. A full suite of metrics can be found in our Infrastructure & Operations Metrics Library in the Take Control of Infrastructure Metrics Storyboard. The metrics have been categorized by low, medium, and advanced capabilities for you.

Example metrics:

Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook

Keep the following considerations in mind when defining which metrics matter

Keep the customer in mind

Metrics are typically focused on transactional efficiency and process effectiveness and not what was achieved against the customers’ need and satisfaction.

Understand the relationships between performance and metrics management to provide the end-to-end service delivery picture you are aiming to achieve.

Don’t settle for tool defaults

ITSM solutions offer an abundance of metrics to choose from. The most common ones are typically built into the reporting modules of the tool suite.

Do not start tracking everything. Choose metrics that are specifically aligned to your organization’s desired business outcomes.

Establish tension metrics to achieve balance

Don’t ignore the correlation and context between the suites of metrics chosen and how one interacts and affects the other.

Measuring metrics in isolation may lead to an incomplete picture or undesired technician behavior. Tension metrics help complete the picture and lead to proper actions.

Adjust those targets

An arbitrary target on a metric that is consistently met month over month is useless. Each metric should inform the overall performance by combining capable service level management and customer experience programs to prove the value IT is providing to the organization.

Related Info-Tech Research

Standardize the Service Desk

This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes, including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management, to create a sustainable service desk.

Take Control of Infrastructure and Operations Metrics

Make faster decisions and improve service delivery by using the right metrics for the job.

Analyze Your Service Desk Ticket Data

Take a data-driven approach to service desk optimization.

IT Diagnostics: Build a Data-Driven IT Strategy

Our data-driven programs ask business and IT stakeholders the right questions to ensure you have the inputs necessary to build an effective IT strategy.

Communicate Any IT Initiative

Plan, compose, and deliver communications that engage your audience.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight
Every IT employee can be a great communicator; it just takes a few consistent steps, the right tools, and a dedication to practicing communicating your message.

Info-Tech’s approach

Effective communications is not a broadcast but a dialogue between communicator and audience in a continuous feedback loop.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. The skills needed to communicate effectively as a front-line employee or CIO are the same. It’s important to begin the development of these skills from the beginning of one's career.
2. Time is a non-renewable resource. Any communication needs to be considered valuable and engaging by the audience or they will be unforgiving.
3. Don't make data your star. It is a supporting character. People can argue about the collection methods or interpretation of the data, but they cannot argue about the story you share.

Poor communication can lead to dissatisfied stakeholders

27.8% of organizations are not satisfied with IT communications.

25.8% of business stakeholders are not satisfied with IT communications.

Source: Info-Tech Diagnostic Programs; n=34,345 business stakeholders within 604 organizations

The bottom line? Stakeholders for any initiative need to be communicated with often and well. When stakeholders become dissatisfied with IT’s communication, it can lead to an overall decrease in satisfaction with IT.

Good IT initiative communications can be leverage

• IT risk mitigation and technology initiative funding are dependent on critical stakeholders comprehending the risk impact and initiative benefit in easy-to-understand terms.
• IT employees need clear and direct information to feel empowered and accountable to do their jobs well.
• End users who have a good experience engaging in communications with IT employees have an overall increase in satisfaction with IT.
• Continuously demonstrating IT’s value to the organization comes when those initiatives are clearly aligned to overall objectives – don’t assume this alignment is being made.
• Communication prevents assumptions and further miscommunication from happening among IT employees who are usually impacted and fear change the most.

“Nothing gets done properly if it's not communicated well.”
-- Nastaran Bisheban, CTO KFC Canada

Approach to communications

Introduction
Review effective communications.

Plan
Plan your communications using a strategic tool.

Compose
Create your own message.

Deliver
Practice delivering your own message.

Info-Tech’s methodology for effective IT communications

This blueprint can support communication about any IT initiative

• Strategy or roadmap
• Major transformational change
• System integration
• Process changes
• Service changes
• New solution rollouts
• Organizational restructuring

We recommend considering this blueprint a natural add-on to any completed Info-Tech blueprint, whether it is completed in the DIY fashion or through a Guided Implementation or workshop.

Key deliverable:

Communication Planner
A single place to plan and compose all communications related to your IT initiative.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

Facilitation Guide
A step-by-step guide to help your IT organization develop a communication plan and practice composing and delivering key messages.

Stakeholder Analysis
An ability to assess all stakeholders based on impact, influence, and involvement.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Key KPIs for communication with any stakeholder

Measuring communication is hard; use these to determine effectiveness:

Phase 1

Plan Strategic Communications

Activities
1.1 Define the Change
1.2 Determine Target Audience
1.3 Communication Outcomes
1.4 Clarify the Key Message(s)
1.5 Identify the Owner and Messenger(s)
1.6 Select the Right Channels
1.7 Establish a Frequency and Time Frame
1.8 Obtain Feedback and Improve
1.9 Finalize the Calendar

Communicate Any IT Initiative Effectively
Phase1 > Phase 2 > Phase 3

This step involves the following participants:
Varies based on those who would be relevant to your initiative.

Outcomes of this step
Create an easy-to-follow communications plan to ensure that the right message is sent to the right audience using the right medium and frequency.

What is an IT change?

Before communicating, understand the degree of change.

Consider the various impacts of the change

Invest time at the start of the project to develop a detailed understanding of the impact of the change. This will help to create a plan that will simplify the change and save time in the end. Evaluate the impact from a people, process, and technology perspective.

Leverage a design thinking principle: Empathize with the stakeholder – what will change?

People

• Team structure
• Reporting structure
• Career paths
• Job skills
• Responsibilities
• Company vision/mission
• Number of FTE
• Culture
• Training required

Process

• Budget
• Work location
• Daily workflow
• Working conditions
• Work hours
• Reward structure
• Required number of completed tasks
• Training required

Technology

• Required tools
• Required policies
• Required systems
• Training required

1.1 Define the change

30 minutes

1. While different stakeholders will be impacted by the change differently, it’s important to be able to describe what the change is at a higher level.
2. Have everyone take eight minutes to jot down what the change is and why it is happening in one to two sentences. Tab 2 of the Communication Planner Tool can also be used to house the different ideas.
3. Present the change statements to one another.
4. By leveraging one of the examples or consolidating many examples, as a group document:
   • What is the change?
   • Why is it happening?
5. The goal is to ensure that all individuals involved in establishing or implementing the change have the same understanding.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Ensure effective communication by focusing on four key elements

Audience
Stakeholders (either groups or individuals) who will receive the communication.

Message
Information communicated to impacted stakeholders. Must be rooted in a purpose or intent.

Messenger
Person who delivers the communication to the audience. The communicator and owner are two different things.

Channel
Method or channel used to communicate to the audience.

Identify the target audience

The target audience always includes groups and individuals who are directly impacted by the change and may also include those who are change adjacent.

Define the target audience: Identify which stakeholders will be the target audience of communications related to the initiative. Stakeholders can be single individuals (CFO) or groups (Applications Team).

Stakeholders to consider:

• Who is sponsoring the initiative?
• Who benefits from the initiative?
• Who loses from the initiative?
• Who can make approvals?
• Who controls resources?
• Who has specialist skills?
• Who implements the changes?
• Who will be adversely affected by potential environmental and social impacts in areas of influence that are affected by what you are doing?
• At which stage will stakeholders be most affected (e.g. procurement, implementation, operations, decommissioning)?
• Will other stakeholders emerge as the phases are started and completed?

1.2a Determine target audience

20 minutes

1. Consider all the potential individuals or groups of individuals who will be impacted or can influence the outcome of the initiative.
2. On tab 3 of the Communication Planner Tool, list each of the stakeholders who will be part of the target audience. If in person, use sticky notes to define the target audiences. The individuals or group of individuals that make up the target audience are all the people who require being communicated with before, during, or after the initiative.
3. As you list each target audience, consider how they perceive IT. This perception could impact how you choose to communicate with the stakeholder(s).

Download the Communication Planner Tool

1.2b Conduct a stakeholder analysis (optional)

1 hour

1. For each stakeholder identified as a part of the target audience, conduct an analysis to understand their degree of influence or impact.
2. Based on the stakeholder, the influence or impact of the change, initiative, etc. can inform the type and way of communicating.
3. This is a great activity for those who are unsure how to frame communications for each stakeholder identified as a target audience.

Download the Stakeholder Management Analysis Tool

Determine the desired outcome of communicating with each audience

For each target audience, there will be an overall goal on why they need to be communicated with. This outcome or purpose is often dependent on the type of influence the stakeholder wields within the organization as well as the type of impact the change or initiative will have. Depending on the target audience, consider each of the communication outcomes listed below.

1.3 Communication outcomes

30 minutes

1. For each stakeholder, there may be one or more reasons why you need to communicate with them. On tab 3 of the Communication Planner Tool or on a whiteboard, begin to identify the objective or outcome your team is seeking by engaging in each target audience.
2. As you move through the communication outcomes, it could result in more than one outcome for each target audience.
3. Ensure there is one line for each target audience desired communication outcome. Many stakeholders might need to be communicated with for several reasons. If using the Communication Planner Tool, add the target audience name in column C for as many different communication outcomes there are in column D related to that stakeholder.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Establish and define key messages based on organizational objectives

Key messages should be clear, concise, and consistent (Porter, 2014). The intent is to convey important information in a way that is relatable and memorable, to promote reinforcement, and ultimately, to drive action.

Info-Tech Insight
Empathizing with the audience is key to anticipating and addressing objections as well as identifying benefits. Customize messaging based on audience attributes such as work model (e.g. hybrid), anticipated objections, what's in it for me? (WIIFM), and specific expectations.

1.4 Clarify the key messages

25 minutes

1. Divide the number of communication lines up equally amongst the participants.
2. Based on the outcome expected from engaging that target audience in communications, define one to five key messages that should be expressed.
3. The key messages should highlight benefits anticipated, concerns anticipated, details about the change, and plan of action or next steps. The goal here is to ensure the target audience is included in the communication process.
4. The key messages should be focused on how the target audience receives a consistent message, especially if different communication messengers are involved.
5. Document the key messages on tab 3 of the Communication Planner Tool.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Understand to how to identify appropriate messengers

Messages must be communicated by a variety of individuals across the organization. Select the messenger depending on the message characteristics (e.g. audience, message, medium). The same messenger can be used for a variety of messages across different mediums.

Personal impact messages should be delivered by an employee's direct supervisor.

Organizational impact messages and rationale should be delivered by senior leaders in the affected areas.

Recent research by Prosci found employees prefer to hear personal messages from their direct manager and organizational messages from the executive leadership team.

Fifty percent of respondents indicated the CEO as the preferred messenger for organizational change messages.

Select the appropriate messenger

For each audience, message, and medium, review whether the message is personal or organizational to determine which messengers are best.

The number and seniority of messengers involved depends on the size of the change:

• Incremental change
  • Personal messages from direct supervisors
  • Organizational messages from a leader in the audience’s function or the direct supervisor
• Transitional change
  • Personal messages from direct supervisors or function leaders
  • Organizational messages from a leader in the audience’s function or the C suite
• Transformational change
  • Personal messages from direct supervisors or function leaders
  • Organizational messages from the CEO or C-suite
  • Cascading messages are critical in this type of change because all levels of the organization will be involved

Communication owner vs. messenger

Communication Owner

Single person
Accountable for the communication message and activities
Oversees that the communication does not contradict other communications
Validates the key messages to be made

Communication Messenger(s)

Single person or many people
Responsible for delivering the intended message
Engages the target audience in the communication
Ensures the key messages are made in a consistent and clear manner

1.5 Identify the owner and messenger(s)

30 minutes

1. For every communication, there needs to be a single owner. This is the person who approves the communication and will be accountable for the communication
2. The messenger(s) can be several individuals or a single individual depending on the target audience and desired outcome being sought through the communications.
3. Identify the person or role who will be accountable for the communication and document this in the Communication Planner Tool.
4. Identify the person(s) or role(s) who will be responsible for delivering the communication and engaging the target audience and document this in the Communication Planner Tool.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Review appropriate channel for different types of messages

Communication channels are in-person, paper-based, or tech-enabled. Provide communicators with guidance on which mediums to use in different situations.

Consider accessibility when communicating change – not all employees will have access to the same mediums. To ensure inclusivity, strategically plan which mediums to use to reach the entire audience.

Select communication channels

Select communication channels

Select communication channels

Select communication channels

1.6 Select the right channels

20 minutes

1. Consider the different channels that were described and presented on the previous five slides. Each channel has element(s) to it that will allow it to be more beneficial based on the communication target audience, outcome, and messenger.
2. Evenly assign the number of communication rows on tab 3 of the Communication Planner Tool and input the channel that should be used.
3. Consider if the channel will:
   • Obtain the desired outcome of the communication.
   • Be completed by the messenger(s) defined.
   • Support the target audience in understanding the key messages.
4. If any target audience communication requires several channels, add additional rows to the planner on TAB 3.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Define the communication time frame based on the initiative

Communication occurs during four of the five stages of an initiative:

Don’t forget: Cascade messages down through the organization to ensure those who need to deliver messages have time to internalize the change before communicating it to others. Include a mix of personal and organizational messages, but where possible, separate personal and organizational content into different communications.

Establish a frequency that aligns to the desired communication outcome

Successful communications are frequent communications.

• The cadence of a communication is highly dependent on the objective of the communication.
• Each target requires a different frequency as well:
  • Board Presentations > four times a year is a good frequency
  • Executive Leadership > monthly frequency
  • Organizationally > annually and when necessary
  • Organization Crises > daily, if not hourly
  • IT Initiatives and Projects > weekly
  • IT Teams > weekly, if not daily

“When goals are talked about weekly, teams are nearly 3X more likely to feel confident hitting them.”
– Hypercontext, 2022

Info-Tech Insight
Communications made once will always fail. Ensure there is a frequency appropriate for every communication — or do not expect the desired outcome.

1.7 Establish a frequency and time frame

30 minutes

1. For each row in tab 3, determine how frequently that communication needs to take place and when that communication needs to be completed by.
   • Frequency: How often the communication will be delivered to the audience (e.g. one-time, monthly, as needed).
   • Time frame: When the communication will be delivered to the audience (e.g. a planned period or a specific date).
2. When selecting the time frame, consider what dependencies need to take place prior to that communication. For example, IT employees should not be communicated with on anything that has not yet been approved by the CEO. Also consider when other communications might be taking place so the message is not lost in the noise.
3. For frequency, the only time that a communication needs to take place once is when presenting up to senior leaders of the organization. And even then it will sometimes require more than one conversation. Be mindful of this.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

First, ensure feedback mechanisms are in place

Soliciting and acting on feedback involves employees in the decision-making process and demonstrates to them that their contributions matter.

Prior to the strategy rollout, make sure you have also established feedback mechanisms to collect feedback on both the messages delivered and how they were delivered. Some ways to collect feedback include:

• Evaluating intranet comments and interactions (likes, etc.) if this function is enabled.
• Measuring comprehension and satisfaction through surveys and polls.
• Looking for themes in the feedback and questions employees bring forward to managers during in-person briefings.

Feedback Mechanisms:

• CIO Business Vision Survey
• Engagement Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Suggestion Boxes
• Team Meetings
• Random Sampling
• Informal Feedback
• Direct Feedback
• Audience Body Language
• Repeating the Message Back

Select metrics to measure progress on key results

There are two types of metrics that can be used to measure the impact of an internal communications strategy and progress toward strategy goals. These metrics are used to measure both outputs and outcomes.

1.8 Obtain feedback and improve

20 minutes

1. Evenly distribute the number of rows in the communication plan to all those involved. Consider a metric that would help inform whether the communication outcome was achieved.
2. For each row, identify a feedback mechanism (slide 38) that could be used to enable the collection and confirm a successful outcome.
3. Come back as a group and validate the feedback mechanisms selected.
4. The important aspect here is not just to measure if the desired outcome was achieved. However, if the desired outcome is not achieved, consider what you might do to change or enable better communication to that target audience.
5. Every communication can be better. Feedback, whether it is tactical or strategic, will help inform methods to improve future communication activities.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Example of internal communications survey

Use and modify the questions below when building an internal communications survey. Use a Likert scale to gauge responses.

1. I am satisfied with the communications at our organization.
2. I am kept fully informed of news and updates relevant to our organization.
3. I receive information that is relevant to me on a regular basis.
4. I have the information I need to do my job.
5. I know where to go to find the information I am looking for.
6. My manager communicates with me in-person on a regular basis.
7. I feel I can believe the information I receive from the company.
8. I feel heard by senior leaders and know that they have received my feedback.
9. The content and information that I receive is interesting to me.

Create an easy-to-read approach to communication

1.9 Finalize the calendar

2 hours

1. Once the information on tabs 2 and 3 of the Communication Planner Tool has been completed, start to organize the information in an easy-to-read view.
2. Using the annual, monthly, and weekly calendar views on tabs 3 to 5, begin to formalize the dates of when communications will take place.
3. Following the instructions on each tab, complete one or all of the views of the communication plan. Remember, the stakeholder that makes up the target audience needs to be considered and whether this communication will overlap with any other communications.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Phase 2

Compose a Compelling Message

Activities

2.1 Craft a Pitch
2.2 Revise the Pitch

This step involves the following participants:
Varies based on those who would be relevant to your initiative.

Outcomes of this step
Ability to create a clear, concise, and consistent message using best practices and a pitch framework.

Communication Any IT Initiative Effectively

Phase 1 > Phase 2 > Phase 3

Include all the following pieces in your message for an effective communication

Info-Tech Insight
Time is a non-renewable resource. The message crafted must be considered a value-add communication to your audience.

Enable good communication with these components

Draft the core messages to communicate

Draft core messages communicating information consistent with the high-level communications plan. This includes the overall goal of communications, key messaging, specifics related to the change action, and customizations for each audience. It’s also important to:

1. Hook your audience: Use a compelling introduction that ensures your target audience cares about the message. Use a statistic or another piece of information that presents the problem in a unique way.
2. Demonstrate you can help: Let the audience know that based on the unique problem you can help. There is value to engaging and working with you further.
3. Repeat messages several times and through several messengers and mediums throughout the change stages to ensure all audience members receive and understand the details.
4. Write for the ear: Use concise and clear sentences, avoid technological language, and when you speak it aloud ensure it sounds like how you would normally speak.
5. Keep messaging positive but realistic. Avoid continually telling stakeholders that “change is hard.” Instead, communicate messages around change success to positively prime the audience’s mindset (Harvard Business Review).
6. Communicate what is meaningfully unchanged. Not everything will be impacted by the change. To help reduce fears, include information about meaningful aspects of employees’ work that will not be changing (e.g. employees are moving to report to a new manager on a new team, but the job responsibilities are staying the same).
7. Finish with a call to action: Your concluding statement should not be a thank-you but a call to action that ignites how your audience will behave after the communication.

Components of a good pitch

Key questions to answer with change communication

To effectively communicate change, answer questions before they’re asked, whenever possible. To do this, outline at each stage of the change process what’s happening next for the audience and answer other anticipated questions. Pair key questions with core messages in change communications.

Examples of key questions by change stage include:

2.1 Craft a pitch

20 minutes

1. Using the set of stakeholders identified in activity 1.2, every participant takes one stakeholder.
2. Open tab 7 of the Communication Planner Tool or use a piece of paper and create a communication message specific to that stakeholder.
3. Select a topic from your workshop or use something you are passionate about.
4. Consider the pitch components as a way to create your pitch. Remember to use what you have learned from the planning and composing sections of this training (in bold).
5. Compose a three-minute pitch that you will deliver to your audience member.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Communication Composition Checklist

• Did you open the communication with a statistic or other memorable piece of information?
• Is the topic being communicated in a compelling way that engages the target audience?
• Are there statistics or data to support the story?
• Are the statistics and data clear so they cannot be conveyed in any other way than their intended method?
• Are you writing in clear and concise sentences?
• Are you avoiding any technical jargon?
• Is the message only focused on what needs to be said? Have you removed all unnecessary components?
• Is the content organized in priority order? Could you adapt if the presentation time is shortened?
• Is the way the communication is written sound like how you would speak normally? Are you writing for the ear?
• Do you have a clear call to action that the audience will be asked to complete at the end?
• Does your communication encourage discussion with the target audience? Is the audience a part of the solution?

2.2 Revise the pitch

10 minutes

1. Review the pitch that was created in activity 2.1.
2. Consider what could be done to make the pitch better:
   • Concise: Identify opportunities to remove unnecessary information.
   • Clear: It uses only terms or language the target audience would understand.
   • Relevant: It matters to the target audience and the problems they face.
   • Consistent: The message could be repeated across audiences.
3. Validate that when you say the pitch out loud, it sounds like something you would say normally when communicating with other people.
4. Make updates to the pitch and get ready to present.

Download the Communication Planner Tool

Phase 3

Deliver Messages Effectively

Activities
3.1 Deliver Your Pitch
3.2 Refine and Deliver Again

This step involves the following participants:
Varies based on those who would be relevant to your initiative.

Outcomes of this step
Ability to deliver the pitch in a manner that is clear and would be understood by the specific stakeholder the pitch is intended for.

Communicate Any IT Initiative Effectively

Phase 1 > Phase 2 > Phase 3

Hone presentation skills before meeting with key stakeholders

Using voice and body

Think about the message you are trying to convey and how your body can support that delivery. Hands, stance, and frame all have an impact on what might be conveyed.

If you want your audience to lean in and be eager about your next point, consider using a pause or softer voice and volume.

Be professional and confident

State the main points of your presentation confidently. While this should be obvious, it is essential. Your audience should be able to clearly see that you believe the points you are stating.

Present in a way that is genuine to you and your voice. Whether you have an energetic personality or a calm and composed personality, the presentation should be authentic to you.

Connect with your audience

Look each member of the audience in the eye at least once during your presentation. Avoid looking at the ceiling, the back wall, or the floor. Your audience should feel engaged – this is essential to keeping their attention.

Avoid reading from your slides. If there is text on a slide, paraphrase it while maintaining eye contact.

Info-Tech Insight
You are responsible for the response of your audience. If they aren’t engaged, it is on you as the communicator.

Use clear slides that avoid distracting the audience

Which slide will be better to present?

Sample A:

Sample B:

3.1 Deliver your pitch

20 minutes

1. Take ten minutes to think about how to deliver your pitch. Where will you emphasize words, speak louder, softer, lean in, stand tall, make eye contact, etc.?
2. Group into pairs. One person is the speaker and the other the audience.
3. Set a timer on your phone or watch.
4. Speaker:
   1. Take a few seconds to center yourself and prepare to deliver your pitch.
   2. Deliver your pitch to Person 2. Don’t forget to use your body language and your voice to deliver.
5. Audience:
   1. Repeats ideas back to Person 1. Are the ideas correct? Are you convinced?
   2. Identifies who the audience is. Are they correct?
6. Reverse roles and repeat.
7. Discuss and provide feedback to one another.

Communication Delivery Checklist

• Are the slides clean so the audience can focus on your speaking and not on reading the context-heavy slide?
• Have you practiced delivering the communication to team members or coaches?
• Have you practiced delivering the communication to someone with little to no technology background?
• Are you making yourself open to feedback and improvement opportunities?
• If the communication is derailed from your plan, are you prepared to handle that change?
• Can you deliver the communication without reading your notes word for word?
• Have you adapted your voice throughout the communication to highlight specific components you want the audience to focus on?
• Are you presenting in a way that is genuine to you and your personality?
• Can you communicate the message within the time allotted?
• Are you moving in an appropriate manner based on your communication (e.g. toward the screen, across the stage, hand gestures).

3.2 Refine and deliver again

1 hour

1. Go back to what you wrote as your pitch and take ten minutes to eliminate more information to get the pitch down to two minutes based on the feedback from your original partner.
2. Repeat the last exercise where you deliver your pitch; however, deliver it to the larger group this time.
3. Focus on ways to adjust body language and voice to make the message more compelling.
4. Identify if your audience is telling you anything with their body language (e.g. leaning in, leaning back). Use this to adjust as you are presenting.
5. Have the group provide additional feedback on what was effective about the message and opportunities to further improve the message.

Info-Tech Insight
Whether the CIO or a service desk technician, delivering a presentation is a fear for every role in IT. Prepare your communication to help overcome the fears that are within your control.

Research Contributors and Experts

Anuja Agrawal
National Communications Director
PwC

Anuja is an accomplished global communications professional, with extensive experience in the insurance, banking, financial, and professional services industry in Asia, the US, and Canada. She is currently the National Communications Director at PwC Canada. Her prior work experience includes communication leadership roles at Deutsche Bank, GE, Aviva, and Veritas. Anuja works closely with senior business leaders and key stakeholders to deliver measurable results and effective change and culture building programs. Anuja has experience in both internal and external communications, including strategic leadership communication, employee engagement, PR and media management, digital and social media, M&A/change and crisis management. Anuja believes in leveraging digital tools and technology-enabled solutions combined with in-person engagement to help improve the quality of dialogue and increase interactive communication within the organization to help build an inclusive culture of belonging.

Nastaran Bisheban
Chief Technology Officer
KFC Canada

A passionate technologist and seasoned transformational leader. A software engineer and computer scientist by education, a certified Project Manager that holds an MBA in Leadership with Honors and Distinction from University of Liverpool. A public speaker on various disciplines of technology and data strategy with a Harvard Business School executive leadership program training to round it all. Challenges status quo and conventional practices; is an advocate for taking calculated risk and following the principle of continuous improvement. With multiple computer software and project management publications she is a strategic mentor and board member on various non-profit organizations. Nastaran sees the world as a better place only when everyone has a seat at the table and is an active advocate for diversity and inclusion.

Heidi Davidson
Co-founder & CEO
Galvanize Worldwide and Galvanize On Demand

Dr. Heidi Davidson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Galvanize Worldwide, the largest distributed network of marketing and communications experts in the world. She also is the Co-Founder and CEO of Galvanize On Demand, a tech platform that matches marketing and communications freelancers with client projects. Now with 167 active experts, the Galvanize team delivers startup advisory work, outsourced marketing, training, and crisis communications to organizations of all sizes. Before Galvanize, Heidi spent four years as part of the turnaround team at BlackBerry as the Chief Communications Officer and SVP of Corporate Marketing, where she helped the company move from a device manufacturer to a security software provider.

Eli Gladstone
Co-Founder
Speaker Labs

Eli is a Co-Founder of Speaker Labs. He has spent over 6 years helping countless individuals overcome their public speaking fears and communicate with clarity and confidence. When he's not coaching others on how to build and deliver the perfect presentation, you'll probably find him reading some weird books, teaching his kids how to ski or play tennis, or trying to develop a good enough jumpshot to avoid being a liability on the basketball court.

Francisco Mahfuz
Keynote Speaker & Storytelling Coach

Francisco Mahfuz has been telling stories in front of audiences for a decade, and even became a National Champion of public speaking. Today, Francisco is a keynote speaker and storytelling coach and offers communication training to individuals and international organisations, and has worked with organisations like Pepsi, HP, the United Nations, Santander and Cornell University. He's the author of Bare: A Guide to Brutally Honest Public Speaking, the host of The Storypowers Podcast, and he’s been part of the IESE MBA communications course since 2020. He's received a BA in English Literature from Birkbeck University in London.

Sarah Shortreed
EVP & CTO
ATCO Ltd.

Sarah Shortreed is ATCO’s Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Her responsibilities include leading ATCO’s Information Technology (IT) function as it continues to drive agility and collaboration throughout ATCO’s global businesses and expanding and enhancing its enterprise IT strategy, including establishing ATCO’s technology roadmap for the future. Ms. Shortreed's skill and expertise are drawn from her more than 30-year career that spans many industries and includes executive roles in business consulting, complex multi-stakeholder programs, operations, sales, customer relationship management and product management. She was recently the Chief Information Officer at Bruce Power and has previously worked at BlackBerry, IBM and Union Gas. She sits on the Board of Governors for the University of Western Ontario and is the current Chair of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Committee at the Conference Board of Canada.

Eric Silverberg
Co-Founder
Speaker Labs

Eric is a Co-Founder of Speaker Labs and has helped thousands of people build their public speaking confidence and become more dynamic and engaging communicators. When he's not running workshops to help people grow in their careers, there's a good chance you'll find him with his wife and dog, drinking Diet Coke and rewatching iconic episodes of the reality TV show Survivor! He's such a die-hard fan, that you'll probably see him playing the game one day.

Stephanie Stewart
Communications Officer & DR Coordinator
Info Security Services Simon Fraser University

Steve Strout
President
Miovision Technologies

Mr. Strout is a recognized and experienced technology leader with extensive experience in delivering value. He has successfully led business and technology transformations by leveraging many dozens of complex global SFDC, Oracle and/or SAP projects. He is especially adept at leading what some call “Project Rescues” – saving people’s careers where projects have gone awry; always driving "on-time and on-budget.“ Mr. Strout is the current President of Miovision Technologies and the former CEO and board member of the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG). His wealth of practical knowledge comes from 30 years of extensive experience in many CxO and executive roles at some prestigious organizations such as Vonage, Sabre, BlackBerry, Shred-it, The Thomson Corporation (now Thomson Reuters) and Morris Communications. Served on Boards including Customer Advisory Boards of Apple, AgriSource Data, Dell, Edgewise, EMC, LogiSense, Socrates.ai, Spiro Carbon Group, and Unifi.

Info-Tech Research Group Contributors:
Sanchia Benedict, Research Lead
Koula Bouloukos, Production Manager
Antony Chan, Executive Counsellor
Janice Clatterbuck, Executive Counsellor
Ahmed Jowar, Research Specialist
Dave Kish, Practice Lead
Nick Kozlo, Senior Research Analyst
Heather Leier Murray, Senior Research Analyst
Amanda Mathieson, Research Director
Carlene McCubbin, Practice Lead
Joe Meier, Executive Counsellor
Andy Neill, AVP, Research
Thomas Randall, Research Director

Plus an additional two contributors who wish to remain anonymous.

Related Info-Tech Research

Boardroom Presentation Review

• You will come away with a clear, concise, and compelling board presentation that IT leaders can feel confident presenting in front of their board of directors.
• Add improvements to your current board presentation in terms of visual appeal and logical flow to ensure it resonates with your board of directors.
• Leverage a best-of-breed presentation template.

Build a Better Manager

• Management skills training is needed, but organizations are struggling to provide training that makes a long-term difference in the skills managers actually use in their day to day.
• Many training programs are ineffective because they offer the wrong content, deliver it in a way that is not memorable, and are not aligned with the IT department’s business objectives.

Crisis Communication Guides

During a crisis it is important to communicate to employees through messages that convey calm and are transparent and tailored to your audience. Use the Crisis Communication Guides to:

• Draft a communication strategy.
• Tailor messages to your audience.
• Draft employee crisis communications.

Use this guide to equip leadership to communicate in times of crisis.

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Gallup. State of the American Workplace Report. Washington, D.C.: Gallup, 6 February 2020.

Guthrie, Georgina. “Why Good Internal Communications Matter Now More than Ever.” Nulab. 15 Dec. 2021.

Hypercontext. “The State of High Performing Teams in Tech 2022.” Hypercontext. 2022.

Lambden, Duncan. “The Importance of Effective Workplace Communication – Statistics for 2022.” Expert Market. 13 June 2022.

McCreary, Gale & WikiHow. “How to Measure the Effectiveness of Communication: 14 Steps.” WikiHow.

Nowak, Marcin. “Top 7 Communication Problems in the Workplace.” MIT Enterprise Forum CEE, 2021.

Nunn, Philip. “Messaging That Works: A Unique Framework to Maximize Communication Success.” iabc.

Picincu, Andra. “How to Measure Effective Communications.” Small Business Chron. 12 January 2021.

Price. David A. “Pixar Story Rules.”

Prosci. “Best Practices in Change Management 2020 Edition.” Prosci, 2020.

Roberts, Dan. “How CIOs Become Visionary Communicators.” CIO, 2019.

Schlesinger, Mark. “Why building effective communication skill in IT is incredibly important.”

Skills Framework for the Information Age, “Mapping SFIA Levels of Responsibilities to Behavioural Factors.” Skills Framework for the Information Age, 2021.

St. James, Halina. Talk It Out. Podium, 2005.

TeamState. “Communication in the Workplace Statistics: Importance and Effectiveness in 2022.” TeamStage, 2022.

Walters, Katlin. “Top 5 Ways to Measure Internal Communication.” Intranet Connections, 30 May 2019.