for matching employees with the right tech

Buying new technology isn’t easy. Employees are better educated, are more demanding, and have more diverse needs. But it’s worth taking the time and doing the research.

1. See computers as more than tools

When is a computer not just a computer?—when you’re using it to attract and retain talent. When you’re fighting for budget, it’s worth reminding the boss that computers aren’t just for doing a job. They’re keeping people in their jobs.

42% of millennials say they’re likely to quit a job with technology they think is below par.
82% of them say they’ll look at the workplace tech before deciding whether to take a new job.
It’s not just vanity. Millennials recognize that advanced technology aids collaboration. And we can’t move at the necessary speed at work without collaboration.

2. Involve managers in gathering requests

Challenge managers to get to know the needs of everyone in their team. Ask them to work with every member of their team to put together an assessment of their needs:

What jobs do they use technology for?
Do they use their computers in or out of the office? And do they move around the office with them?
What software do they need?
What’s working/not working with what they already have?
What have they used elsewhere that they found helpful?
3. Think outside the (one) box

The big beige box isn’t going to do it for everyone anymore—if you could even find a beige tower these days. Your field engineer’s rugged tablet is going to look stupid on the receptionist’s desk, and your graphic designer can’t work productively on any kind of tablet.

4. Come together

When managers have gathered their teams’ needs, grumbles, and wishes, it’s time to sit together.

This isn’t just a time for horse-trading or complaining about your pinched budget. It’s an education opportunity. You can acknowledge that the cloud sharing service employees desperately want to use is incredibly fast and useful. But now’s your chance to point out the security holes. There’s a good chance the employees agitating for a tool don’t want it more than they want the company’s data to be safe and their files to stay uncorrupted. Don’t assume employees will know or understand all the trade-offs in IT just because you do.

5. Retire old devices gracefully

Buying replacement IT means retiring the old IT. Don’t let employees leave laptops full of sensitive data in desk drawers because they have new ones—or worse, throw the laptops out. If you’re replacing something, make sure you see the old model before handing over the new model. Then destroy it.

A collaborative approach pushes some of the responsibility back on the rest of the business and gives you a chance to change any bad-guy perception employees have of IT.