Whether you are an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur in the IT industry, training always makes the difference when it comes to productivity and compensation. If you are a member of a large IT staff, you know the more you work on your skills, the more recognition you receive for your solutions to programming and database administration challenges. If you work on a small IT team, your training is even more important to arriving at solutions quickly. At the end of the day in order to succeed, an IT professional must be willing to work on their skills to keep up with an ever changing industry and remain competitive in the market place.
5 Reasons to Sharpen Up Your IT Staff’s Skill Set
1. Adaptability
In these times of economic uncertainty, your ability to adapt to and manage change will be the key to success in business. Many CEO’s and CIO’s know that a business can only grow as fast as their IT infrastructure will allow them to grow. Refined programming, development and administrative technical skills provide a path to success through periods of economic uncertainty.
2. Keep Competitive
As the country and world emerge from the economic recession, companies just can’t afford to have outdated skills on their front lines. By elevating the skill set of your IT employees, your company can outperform your competitors. Nimble skilled-up teams will thrive, when others will dive.
3. Avoid Brain Drain
Most companies understand that an investment dollar spent in training is also an investment dollar in retention. It is a known fact that the more supported an employee feels the more loyal they become. What many CIO’s fear is that training investment dollars will leave with the recovery, but we have found quite the opposite to be true. In fact according to the American Society for Training and Development, the opportunity for skill development is key retention factor for employees, and an organization’s inability to provide it is often cited as cited reason for leaving an employer. Just remember, IT training for retaining.
4. Increase Productivity
While it may seem obvious that more skill equals more productivity, some IT managers are reluctant to invest in training because productivity gains can often be hard to measure. One way to ensure your staff is maximizing your training dollar is to have them earn their certification in a particular technology. Whether the Certification is in Oracle, Microsoft, PHP, SQL, etc. having certified experts demonstrates mastery of a skill. It also helps your team network with other technology certified people to arrive at new solutions to technology business challenges. During the economic downturn you might have laid people off and additional training can broaden the skill matrix of those that remain on your staff.
5. Be Prepared for Growth with Cross Training.
As the economy begins to recover, with training, your technology team will be adequately prepared to compete. The cross training of IT staff in technologies like Oracle to PHP may allow your company to complete a wide variety of new projects with the existing small staff. Imagine having a small team that can secure the network, create the intranet and even repair hardware because you invested in IT training during tough economic times.
All the reasons in the world can’t convince a CIO/CTO to invest in IT training, however, think about what it means to your organization if you don’t have a technology training plan. Are you willing to take the chance on emerging from these tough economic times being less competitive? Your technology training plan may be a combination of online, virtual and on-site classroom style learning. Many IT training companies in Denver offer custom classes with just three students that allow you to tailor fit the training to achieve a specific business technology outcome. Those companies that follow their plan will emerge with a more nimble, adaptable and competitive IT staff.
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