What Professionals Want

Anyone looking for skilled workers must also create a good working environment for them, because according to various studies, supply and demand diverge widely. According to the Stepstone specialist atlas, the number of vacancies for qualified personnel has never been as high as in 2016. In IT alone, the number of job advertisements grew by 24 percent compared to 2015.

Stepstone and Kienbaum investigated what skilled workers expect from your employer.

The study found that four out of five specialists in Germany want to work in companies with flat hierarchies. At the same time, however, they do not want to forego clear guidelines.

Clear instructions

65 percent of the 12,000 respondents stated that they wanted a manager who gave clear instructions. How a company is structured is of great importance for specialists. Three out of four believe that the structure of the company is important for their overall job satisfaction.

“Specialists are real career planners today. You are interested in how a company works. It is no longer just a question of whether they have the right skills for a job. They also want to know whether the way of working and the management culture in a company suit them,”explains Dr. Sebastian Dettmers, managing director at Stepstone.

The supervisors surveyed recognize their importance for employee satisfaction. 95 percent of managers agree that a good management culture has a major impact on employee retention.

More responsibility

Overall, three quarters of the experts surveyed want more responsibility in their jobs. "In many companies, digitization ensures that employees are faced with changing requirements and have to take on new tasks. The fact that the specialists are ready to assume more responsibility is a good signal for the German economy,”says Dr. Walter Jochmann, managing director at Kienbaum. “Companies can take advantage of the desire for flat hierarchies. Employers who work in appropriate structures have a strong argument in recruiting."

The ideas of the employees also offer untapped potential for German companies. Only every fifth respondent states that the introduction of suggestions for improvement is actively encouraged at their own employer. 45 percent of the specialists and managers surveyed work in companies in which there are no fixed processes for collecting and processing ideas, or where employee ideas are expressly not desired.

This article first appeared on our sister portal www.it-business.de.