Win the telco talent acquisition battle by enhancing developer experience

The development of new technologies such as 5G and Open RAN highlight that the positions telecommunications organisations need to fill require workers with proficiency in some very specific areas. While companies search for these in-demand candidates, workers are looking for specific experiences as well. In addition to receiving competitive salaries, they expect to feel supported, valued and engaged.

Creating an environment where employees feel actively engaged in their work is one of the most elusive and challenging goals for employers. Engagement (or lack thereof) is driven by a variety of factors including effective management, team cohesion, and perhaps most importantly, a feeling of doing meaningful work. A Gallup employee engagement survey noted that in 2023, only 23% of employees across all industries reported that they are engaged at work. 

The same survey measured the business results of organisations that scored in the top quartile for employee engagement vs. organisations that scored at the bottom quartile, and the findings are clear. Companies with engaged employees perform better in every area, from showing lower staff turnover to higher productivity and profitability.

Advice for improving engagement often centres around creating a more “human-centric” culture. This is a broad term which essentially means recognising that people are multi-faceted, and taking their needs into account. 

Every role contains unpopular tasks that many consider dull or repetitive. Encouragingly, emerging technologies such as knowledge bases leveraging generative AI (GenAI) have the ability to make some of the most onerous tasks easier for employees. These tools help to create a supportive and engaging workplace across functions, from hardware and software engineering, to operations, marketing and customer service.

Some of the tasks that slow development and create frustration for developers include growing complexity of the tools they use, dependencies on other teams for procedural approvals, and older IT processes that don’t work well with cloud-based systems. Dealing with these sometimes overwhelming challenges can drive great developers to look for other opportunities where they can spend their time doing more meaningful and creative work.

A solution that can help create a positive environment for software developers in telecommunications is platform engineering. This is a practice that, through a variety of tools and applications, removes many of the barriers to productivity, streamlines procedural and repetitive tasks, and gives developers more freedom to create and experiment.

Head of DevOps and Platform Engineering for Nearform, Luca Lanzani, describes the pressures put on developers, and how platform engineering can help:

Before a platform engineering project can begin, one of the first steps is to gather information about the developer experience in an organisation. This process, in addition to providing insight into what processes or procedures are the most challenging, provides developers with an opportunity to have their voices heard and express their thoughts about where improvements could be made. This ability to speak and be heard is in itself part of what makes for an “in-demand” workplace that can entice top talent. Then once platform engineering takes much of the drudgery out of the day-to-day, it becomes an even more desirable environment for developers.

Studies show that employees and employers both welcome applications of GenAI, with 33% of each saying that they believe it will increase productivity and create new ways of working. In fact, more than half (52%) of employees report that they expect AI to make a positive impact on their career.

One way that generative AI is already helping train and retain employees is through knowledge bases. A knowledge base is a digital repository where all of the aggregated knowledge and documentation about an organisation’s products, processes and expertise can be stored. Once it’s all gathered into an application, people can ask questions using natural language, and rapidly receive answers generated by generative AI technology. The GenAI tech searches through the documentation and provides a relevant, unique answer based on the source material. 

Access to a thorough knowledge base can aid in training new hires, and answer questions from existing employees at all levels. It also preserves institutional knowledge as workers retire or leave the company, and eliminates the need to interrupt a colleague or wait for answers.

Knowledge bases can be extremely helpful in telecommunications, where older hardware and software may be in use alongside newly deployed versions. Even the most experienced workers can’t be proficient in every different product. In this complex world, the ability to ask a question and get an immediate answer both helps technicians complete their work easier, and saves time.

The two examples above represent some ways in which technology can help organisations make work more rewarding for their employees — and more desirable to top recruits. But it’s important to remember that it’s humans who create the most positive impact in any work environment. Even the decision to integrate these tools into a company’s culture requires honest evaluation, consultation and partnership between a variety of stakeholders. 

A good place to start is to seek input and advice from a technology partner that not only knows the technical challenges of implementing time-and-labour-saving applications, but also takes the time to gain a deep understanding of existing pain points. 

Humans need engagement and support to thrive, and technology that’s intended to improve human experience can’t be successful without strong human collaboration.