Top Certifications Can Reduce Employee Turnover

CIOs face the challenge of having an engaged staff but also a well compensated one. Helping employees achieve certifications that benefit your organization as well as your employees could help reduce turnover and make your IT department more productive.

Global Knowledge and Penton conducted their 2014 IT Skills and Salary Survey (pdf). It identified 15 top-paying certifications, seven of which are detailed below. (Those paying six figures or more and involving current software certification are highlighted below.) Knowing them could help boost your employee morale if you’re willing to invest in the training.

A study by Pluralsight (pdf) says, “The truth is that people who opt to tackle a career in tech are a fickle, tricky bunch. That near-genius IQ can often come with a host of personality quirks that could force your hand into treating those staff members with kid gloves. Knowing that, you have to be careful about how you approach these employees, and you must build an environment that fosters loyalty and growth.”

It says the top 5 ways to do that is focusing on: the work environment; hardware/software programs; perks of hard work; recognition and education. That’s where focusing on the top certification programs comes in handy. As the study determines, “The education of your staff has the added benefit of giving your team even more skills with which to pull from and allows them to produce more quickly and efficiently while staying on top of best practices and the latest technologies.”

Here is the Global Knowledge list with descriptive text and average salary.

• Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) – $118,253: The CRISC certification is designed for IT professionals, project managers, and others whose job it is to identify and manage risks through appropriate Information Systems (IS) controls, covering the entire lifecycle, from design to implementation to ongoing maintenance.
• Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) – $114,844: It’s aimed at management more than the IT professional and focuses on security strategy and assessing the systems and policies in place more than it focuses on the person who actually implements those policies using a particular vendor’s platform.
• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) – $112,040: It is designed to test the candidate’s ability to manage vulnerabilities, ensure compliance with standards, and propose controls, processes, and updates to a company’s policies to ensure compliance with accepted IT and business standards.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) – $108,525: The PMP certification exam tests five areas relating to the lifecycle of a project: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. PMP certification is for running any kind of project, and it is not specialized into sub types, such as manufacturing, construction, or IT.
• Certified Scrum Master – $107,396: Scrum is a rugby term; it’s a means for restarting a game after a minor rules violation or after the ball is no longer in play (for example, when it goes out of bounds). In software development, Scrum is a project management process that is designed to act in a similar manner for software (application development) projects in which a customer often changes his or her mind during the development process.
• Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) for Citrix NetScaler – $103,904: The CCA for NetScaler certification has been discontinued for NetScaler 9, and those with a current certification are encouraged to upgrade to the new Citrix Certified Professional – Networking (CCP-N).
• Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) – $103,822: The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) created and manages CEH certification. It is designed to test the candidate’s abilities to prod for holes, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities in a company’s network defenses using techniques and methods that hackers employ.