Bill Krivoshik, Marsh & McLennan Companies’ first enterprise CIO, explains his outlook on hiring, staffing and developing younger IT workers. 

Bill Krivoshik is no stranger to economic turmoil, or downturns in the financial services industry. The veteran IT leader has served as CIO of AIG, CTO of Citigroup Global Investment Management and Thomson Financial before joining Marsh & McLennan in April 2009 as the company’s first enterprise CIO.

Krivoshik sat down with Workforce News Editor Brian P. Watson recently to discuss the current job market and his outlook for staffing up in the future. He also shared some compelling perspectives on employee engagement and getting the most out of Generation Y employees.

The following is an edited version of their discussion.

WORKFORCE NEWS: Unemployment numbers are still high. CIOs have been grappling with staffing issues for a while now. What’s your take on the biggest issues in IT staffing today?

There are several issues, and they’re kind of intermingled. The job market isn’t great, and there’s obviously been significant financial pressure on companies.

We’ve been focused on cost savings and becoming more efficient and productive. What does that say? It says you can’t really go out and hire the level of talent—or the amount of talent, to build your bench—that you have in the past.

The flipside is that it should be easier, theoretically, to keep the talent you have in your company today. The risk you run, though, is becoming complacent or taking that talent for granted. Coming up through my career, I remember when I was treated well in poor times and when I was treated poorly in poor times. So it’s important that we continue to challenge our people and train and develop our workforce.

Managing the Millennial generation poses interesting challenges for CIOs. You and I were at an industry event last year where we heard many IT leaders cast a negative light on those professionals—calling them “mercenaries” with no corporate loyalty. But IT is under such pressure to deliver, so you need to keep this generation engaged. How are working to do that?

You and I have spoken about whether that is unique to this generation. My view is, maybe it’s more pronounced (in Millennials). Maybe they’re more confident and have better skills and credentials as they enter the workforce.

During the course of my career, I wanted to grow and develop myself. So have the people who have worked for me. This generation wants the same challenges and opportunities for growth. So it’s an interesting issue, but not as bad of an issue as some make it out to be, because it’s not unique to this generation.

Some of the things that worked previously will work with this generation:

1.       Give them exciting and stretch challenges. Don’t give the new guys the most boring work—they’ll have to do some of it, but you don’t kill them with the most rote, mundane stuff.

2.       Put in place mechanisms for tracking the growth of the entry-level workforce. This should be done for all employees but will be very useful with this generation.

3.       Establish mentoring programs. Identify who your high-potential workers are, and make sure you have the right people reaching out to them and supporting them.

Millennials grew up with technology all around them. So shouldn’t a CIO see them as an asset for some newer technologies and techniques, like social networking and mobility?

It’s interesting that you ask that. Our current head of HR arrived shortly before me in early 2010, and one of his initial initiatives was to understand the engagement level of our employee base. What I thought was really interesting was, after we did our surveys, we then communicated the results back to the employees through social media Websites. We offered an online question-and-answer forum where anyone could ask a question and get an answer from even high-level executives.

The person that drove that initiative for HR is relatively young and very savvy in these technologies. And I have to tell you, it was a great experience and a great success. The feedback I’m hearing from those who participated in the process was all positive. The advantage is that someone who uses these technologies as part of their everyday life is more likely to find an effective use for them in a work setting.

A lot of IT leaders have told me that they’ve seen this generation introduce innovative uses of technologies like this in other functional areas, and that’s spurred them to look to their younger IT workers for insight.

It’s a matter of finding whatever skill set a group of like-minded people have. This generation clearly has been raised on this kind of technology; they really get it. Going back to the initiative you’re doing at Workforce to train returning military veterans—they have a very strong discipline and the ability to work under enormous pressure.

It’s about recognizing what skills these groups bring into the workplace just because of who they are and the environment in which they’ve grown up.

Going back to the economic climate—as it improves, what “people” issues do you think will be top of mind for IT leaders?

I just took a trip to Latin America, and I had meetings with our people in Brazil and Mexico. One of the issues that came up was training. Down in the area where work is being done, the training budget may be cut, but even in the recession, neither I nor my leadership team wanted to cut it. You still need a well-trained and excited workforce. It’s hard for them to perform at the highest levels if they’re not adequately trained for what you’re asking them to accomplish. That seems fairly obvious.

If you treat your people well during tough times, they’ll remember that, and you’ll build some loyalty. But if you treat them poorly in tough times, they’ll remember that, too. Again, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t want to continue to grow. Training is a key part of that, so it’ll have to continue. And It should become easier to execute that vision throughout the organization.

One of the things I worry about during an economic downturn is when you don’t hire a lot of people off-campus, or even at senior levels. So suddenly you have a stagnant workforce from not bringing in new ideas and approaches. So say you stop doing campus recruiting. Five years later, when you’re looking for someone with five years of experience in-house to step up, you realize you don’t have anyone. That means you need to go hire them, get someone more experienced than you need, or give someone with less experience a real stretch goal.

Still, so many CIOs say they’re in cost-management mode. It seems clear that things will never go back to the way they were, post-recession, in terms of staffing.

I think that’s right. We are really focusing on both sides of the equation. We’re focusing on cost savings; we want to take some of those savings and drop them to the bottom line, and quite frankly, we want to use some of it to invest in the business. It’s a lot more palatable to self-fund than it is to ask for more money.

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