Best Practices in the ICT Consultancy Sector to Engage Star Talents

One of Finland’s business strengths is the know-how on IT business, but lately, the industry has suffered from rapid talent turnover. The labor market is highly competitive, and it creates more challenges for the organizations to keep their talents in the organization. ICT consultancy is a branch of IT businesses, with knowledge-intensive competences, where the capabilities of a single employee may be creating a competitive advantage in business. Organizations want to keep these star talents, but operating in a challenging business environment gives extra concerns. The objective of the Thesis was to find out what the organizations from the ICT consultancy sector do to engage their talents. The outcome of the study was to provide best practices for engaging star talents. The thesis was carried out using Action research methodology, with an aim to provide important knowledge for business practitioners. To better understand the business problem, existing knowledge was studied to build up the conceptual framework. The conceptual framework focused on exploring the theories behind star talent management, why the companies should be interested in their stars, and the theories to increase employee engagement. Then, the current state analysis of the business context was examined by conducting interviews with the professionals in the ICT consultancy business. At the Thesis proposals stage, these two patterns compared, what is theoretically found as an effective method, and what the business practitioners view as working in the real life. As a result, best practices for ICT consultancy companies to engage their star talents were developed. It was found that the organizations have a similar perspective of what kind of talents make the stars in the industry, and also what constitutes the needs of the organization. The thesis findings highlighted the importance of management and leadership, and the organization’s ability to give a feeling of meaningful work. Other factors that were seen as important were the rewarding either in a form of recognition or financially, and the offering of competitive benefits