A leading global systems integrator supporting high-stakes financial transactions faced a critical talent shortage as experienced mainframe professionals retired, exacerbating an already significant industry-wide skills gap.  With rising demands from one of Canada’s largest banks, ensuring uninterrupted operations and timely project delivery became paramount.

Challenges

Rising demand for mainframe services put pressure on the organization to maintain service quality and adapt to evolving client needs. Key challenges included :

• Skill gaps: The clients’ expanding mainframe services created an urgent demand for skilled professionals in critical areas like DASD support, COBOL, and Z-OS.
• Talent attrition: The retiring of experienced mainframe experts disrupted operations, impacted client satisfaction, and jeopardized delivery timelines.
• Retention issues: The combination of high-pressure workloads, on-site role requirements, and unconventional working hours made retaining critical mainframe talent increasingly difficult.

Our solution

To address these challenges, we designed a customized talent solution to help the client hire mainframe experts, upskill their workforce, and build long-term talent retention strategies.

Strategic talent acquisition

Leveraging Bestshoring and market intelligence analysis, we strategically sourced talent across the U.S. and Canada, ensuring regional alignment with the client’s operational needs and geographic footprint. We created a specialized team based near Toronto to support their work with Canada’s largest bank and leveraged our extensive talent engine to quickly hire talent with the required technical skills.

Partnering for customized training program

We partnered with the client to co-create a tailored tech training program focused on essential mainframe technologies and business-specific needs. The program, guided by our experts with decades of hands-on experience, provided practical, real-world training for team members and incorporated a feedback-driven approach to continually refine it for maximum impact.

Streamlined onboarding and compliance

We built regional mainframe cohorts to be deployed across the U.S. and Canada, including specialized teams to serve several of Canada’s leading financial institutions. Our accelerated onboarding processes reduced time-to-productivity, ensuring strict adherence to deadlines.

Retention-focused initiatives

Through our Belong:IN program, we extended access to our established Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), to foster a culture of inclusion and belonging and drive consultant performance. Combined with competitive benefits, upskilling opportunities, access to mentorship, and work-life balance initiatives, our efforts ensured high job satisfaction and retention.

Business outcomes

Our talent solution helped the client successfully address their mainframe workforce challenges. Our ability to hire talent quickly and implement retention-focused strategies, enabled them to create a scalable, future-ready workforce while ensuring consistent delivery excellence.

• Rapid talent reinforcement: Within a year, we built and trained a high-performing team skilled in DASD support, capacity and performance planning, COBOL, and Z-OS, ensuring operational continuity.
• Improved retention rates:  With nearly all consultants retained, we demonstrated exceptional consultant satisfaction and work stability, highlighting our reputation as a trusted and supportive partner.
• Operational agility: We leveraged our Bestshoring model to provide cost-effective, region-specific talent solutions, enabling the client to meet deadlines and maintain high service standards.
• Sustainable workforce stability: Through ongoing mentorship, upskilling opportunities, and inclusive consultant engagement, we helped the client build a resilient team ready for the future.