How To Retain QA Software Testers in 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic propelled governments, economies and communities across the globe into a state of uncertainty. While adapting to this disruption has come at a big cost for businesses, employees and consumers, the effects of the pandemic weren't disadvantageous for every sector.

In fact, the pandemic has given IT professionals a lot of leverage. With the dramatic increase in employees working remotely, the pandemic has led to the creation of more job opportunities for developers, business analysts, quality assurance testers and data scientists. Before Covid-19, IT experts had to look for jobs close to their home, but they can now seek employment in a different state, country or continent. Because they can access new markets, IT professionals today have more bargaining chips when negotiating job contracts.

But unlocking new employment opportunities has also caused attrition for many organizations since IT professionals are now less likely to worry about job stability. Frequent staff turnover isn't costly only from a recruitment perspective, it affects brand loyalty and drains funds in the wake of knowledge loss.  

So, what can organizations do to offset attrition and keep QA testers on payroll in today's job market? 

Break monotony and provide more challenging tasks.

Most QA testing professionals, especially the top-performing ones, dislike coming to work where all they do is go around in circles, performing tasks that they have outgrown. Unless they feel challenged to solve problems and flex their creative muscle, they're unlikely to stick around. This is why management needs to create opportunities that engage their employees in accordance with their seniority status and creative capacity. 

Train your staff.

This is an extension of the previous item because it underscores the importance of providing QA testing professionals with enough engagement to feel motivated. Additional training opportunities not only teach your employees important new skills that add value to your company, they send a signal that management cares about its staff.

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Training programs boost morale, improve job satisfaction and increase job security because new skills lead to better quality performance. As a reminder, employees who are not engaged cost their company the equivalent of 18% of their annual salary, according to Gallup.

Reduce friction with developers and foster camaraderie.

Sometimes, QA testers find out that the code is flawed, other times that it's correctly executing the wrong activity. It also happens that the developers design the code from the perspective of someone who knows its pathways inside and out (a.k.a. themselves). But that doesn't mean that end-users will use the application the same way.

Once mistakes are pointed out to developers, they sometimes take things personally, and ego issues take center stage. Due to the hierarchy of jobs, it's often the QAs who lose out when things blow up. Organizations need to protect their QAs and make sure that the integrity of their decisions is preserved.

Invest in star performers.

A 2014 study in Personnel Psychology corroborated Pareto’s Principle, which states that 80% of consequences result from 20% of the causes. In the business world, this means that only a small fraction of the workforce is actually behind a large proportion of the output.

According to the study, companies should abandon the assumption that all workers must improve by the same degree in order to boost overall productivity. In fact, companies should focus on training that marginally improves the performance of stars. These high-performance employees may better increase overall production instead of training programs that substantially improve the performance of average workers.

Provide your employees with advancement opportunities.

Gone are the days when QA testing professionals were the final act before the product release. Today, they're active participants in the delivery cycle whose tasks can make or break your application.

They’re not happy to be delegated to the fringe of operations — they want to break into positions in management, project management, business analysis and even development. To retain top performers, companies should carve out meaningful growth paths for their testers or risk losing them to rival firms.

Give competitive salary packages.

Many companies avoid promoting their QA testing professionals as a way of not giving wage increases. For this reason, a lot of testers job-hop to achieve speedier salary hikes — a costly practice for the companies involved. The average cost of a new hire is about $4,000, which doesn't count the hidden onboarding costs. Companies shouldn't forget that money is the most important factor for jobseekers when deciding where to work.

Become your company's QA cheerleader.

QA testers don't always receive the level of appreciation that they should. Many people wrongly assume that QAs became testers because they weren’t good enough to become developers. Nothing is further from the truth.

QAs play a vital role to ensure that the product functions perfectly and meets clients' expectations. Leaders must do more to quash the profession's bad rep and advocate for their QA teams among other departments, so they recognize the value of testing and give their colleagues the respect that they deserve.

Companies need to be smarter to attract and retain QAs.

While the pandemic has thrown many jobseekers into a tailspin, QA testing professionals have seen new markets open up on the heels of remote work. QAs can now work in a region of their choice, which is increasing pressure on employers to come up with creative ways of keeping their workers happy and engaged.

To retain their staff in today's job market, organizations must up their game by providing more training programs and giving more generous salary packages. But even this may not cut it. Firms must also do more to offer better advancement opportunities, invest in high-performing employees and champion their QA team with other departments. Otherwise, they risk losing their QAs to competition and watching valuable know-how leak out of their organization.

Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/03/01/treat-qa-testing-talent-well-or-lose-it-to-competition/?sh=39d2776e306e