CIO Survey shows serious impact to IT budgets
CIO Magazine ran a survey of 208 Chief Information Officers (CIO) and reported the results in an article titled “IT Budget & Staffing Survey Shows Bleak Year Ahead for CIOs, IT Staffs“. The results aren’t surprising…or at least shouldn’t be surprising to anyone in the IT field.
Some highlights from the article:
- More than half of IT heads (53%) now plan to slash budgets in response to unfavorable economic conditions
- 59% of CIOs are implementing IT hiring freezes
- A little over one third (34%) have begun reducing IT headcount
- 35% of CIOs plan a decrease in compensation in the coming year
- Nearly a third of CIOs (31%) say they plan to reduce their full-time, in-house staff
- 48% of CIO’s plan to reduce spending for contractors and temporary workers
- 46% of CIO’s are slashing their training budgets
- 38% of CIOs say they are more likely to consider on-demand services and SaaS as a result of the unfavorable economic condition
Interesting results but not surprising. Anyone close to the IT field could see this coming. I expect that these same percentages would apply to many other parts of the organization as well.
The results (or at least the reporting of the results) brings up a few questions:
- Which industries will be hit hardest?
- Who will be hit the hardest by any compensation decreases? Frontline employees or IT Senior Leadership? Both?
- If budgets are slashed now, at what point will the CIO and the rest of the organization determine that they should start spending money again? Slashing budgets during a downturn does not get you ready for the upturn.
- What affect does this budget cutting have on employee morale and engagement? Budgets decrease and most likely, morale decreases.
Jump over and read the rest of the results.
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