When Frank Wander took the job of CIO at The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America in 2006, the employee turnover rate was 13.6 percent. After Wander began implementing technologies and an atmosphere to create trust, productivity and creativity, the turnover rate fell to 4 percent, reports Alison Diana at CIO Insight.

Wander focused from the outset on establishing clear guidelines for governance and responsibility as well as flexibility for trying new things. He put in place a governance process to establish who was in charge of which responsibilities and decisions. "Before that [governance process] was put into place, people had to champion an idea. It personalized every decision, so we depersonalized things. I use governance to get a very good result for the company," he said. "Productivity is the result of very good design decisions."

Treating employees as professionals with clearly defined responsibilities reduces uncertainty, fear and in-fighting. But corporate cultures do not always foster this kind of interaction. "The traditional corporate environment has a long way to go in thinking that people are a resource instead of an interchangeable part," Wander said. "Human productivity is incredibly complicated."

It can be particularly complicated to address mistakes without damaging a culture of trust and creativity. If IT pros are overly worried about holding onto their jobs, the anxiety can hamper creativity. Wander wanted to avoid this predicament. "We don't blame people for mistakes, although we do hold people accountable if they make the same mistake twice-that's an error," he said. "IT failure is a social pathology. It's not a software-hardware problem. This stuff is not that hard. We take risks every day. We're always doing something we haven't done before [in IT]. We're adventurers."

Wander's approach has resulted in a 92 to 94 percent on-time system delivery. The CIO underscores the environment of trust and appreciation by sending hand-written notes to employees on anniversaries or promotions to congratulate them. "You've got to integrate employees into the social environment and make them feel part of the community," he said. "People want to work in an environment that is productive and collaborative, where they can relax and do their job. We want to maintain that connectedness."

The dramatic reduction in employee turnover reduced Guardian's recruiting and training costs. "The longer we keep people, the better the return on my investment," he concludes. "You want to keep a lot of value in IT? Don't destroy it. I don't want to break them up. I want them to become tighter."

For more:
- see Alison Diana's article at CIO Insight

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