Training budgets were looking like a thing of the past, but the industry is starting to bounce back. Natalie Hambly finds the issues to consider when training your staff members.

Inside this story So, why train? What you need and what you can get E-learning, more than hype? Who’s out there?

The IT sector has had some trouble with training over the last few years. Companies are reluctant to spend the money on training, yet IT is one area where you need to be constantly upgrading your skills to catch up with changes in technology.

The problem for employers is that without investing in their staff, they are losing out on necessary competencies to move the company forward. Alternatively they are hiring contractors who already have the skills, but contractors are expensive and temporary.

Contractors are also in a tough spot—they need to constantly upgrade their skills to stay employable, but education takes time, and time spent on a course is time not earning income.

Full-time IT staff members are losing out too. Without employer support, if they want to be exposed to new technologies and competencies, then they have to pay for it themselves, and IT training doesn’t come cheap.

Talking to people within the training industry and they say company training budgets are at an all-time low. With tight budgets, management is looking for cost savings and training is an easy casualty.

“Training is one of the first to be shaved,” says Jen Redman, delivery manager of Alphawest’s training division. “IT budgets have always been something of a soft target—but even where an organisation sets a fair and reasonable training budget, by the time individuals look at taking up training that budget has probably been cut in half.”

However the importance of training should not be overlooked. We often read about project nightmares involving missed deadlines and budget blowouts, but how much of that would be partly due to employees not having the skills required to complete the project, and project managers not having the experience and training necessary to successfully manage the project?

"Money that's spent has to be seen to be bringing almost tangible returns which is not always the case with training." - Jen Redman, Alphawest.

Kevin Ackhurst, Director of Microsoft Services, which offers consulting and customer support, says his department is often brought in to rescue troubled projects and help people come up with better management procedures. In his opinion, projects run in to trouble when they aren’t fully scoped from the outset—which includes training. “People don’t allow for training in the project timing,” he explains.

This is something Redman can relate to. She says customers often contact Alphawest needing training in a hurry. Usually, she says, project managers realise too late that they don’t have the skills necessary within the team to complete the project, which means they need to organise training at the last minute.

She cites the case of one customer rolling out a new system which required 23 employees being trained in about eight technical courses. The client realised too late and had to arrange training as quickly as possible, which ended up being carried out over five to seven months. Another customer—a government department—was rolling out Exchange and had left it so late that training needed to be squeezed in between the implementation.

“It was all left to the last minute and they are not alone . . . [companies] don’t realise they need training until the last minute,” says Redman.

Doug O’Hara, Education Services Manager NSW at KAZ Computer System, says companies are now driven by what they need to do in the near term. “Those horizons are very short, typically three to six months out,” he says. “In the past people provided a plan—a one-, two-, or three-year plan, but they don’t exist anymore.”

So why train?
The main impetus for training is the deployment of new technology, whether it be a new operating system or a system upgrade. However with depleting budgets and a lack of central in-house management, training is generally completed on an as-needed basis, or when an employee sees a need for a new skill.

Not many companies have an employee devoted to compiling a skills registry and managing training programs for all staff members, that means a lot of managers don’t actually know what skills their staff have, and what skills their department needs.

“Speaking to IT managers, in some cases positions have almost disappeared and there is not always someone solely responsible for [training] the way they were a couple of years ago,” says Redman. “And they don’t seem to have as much control over their training budgets the way they used to.”

One of the reasons why training has been an easy target to cut, is because it is difficult to calculate the return on investment. It is also difficult to measure what skills have been gained and how it benefits the company. This is especially the case for soft skills, such as management courses. However, even certification courses are becoming hard to justify.

“Businesses want realisable return and customer gain,” says O’Hara. “There has been a shift in certification . . . a lot of employers regard it as a benefit for the individual, so what many employers are now doing is saying that we will do the training and development and you pay for the certifcation exams.

“However, the larger investment is in the training,” he adds. Alphawest’s Redman also sees the problem companies are having justifying the expense of training. “I think because so many organisations have to answer to their shareholders, the money that’s spent has to be seen to be bringing almost tangible returns which is not always the case with training,” she says.

“But it can be justified with the rollout of infrastructure . . . which I think is why we see a flurry of that activity all at once,” she adds.

Of course, not all companies are doing it so tough. Someone is keeping all of these trainers in business and it is generally large financial organisations, such as banks, and government departments. Ackhurst says the Microsoft Services division has about 500 staff across Australia and New Zealand and each staff member is exposed to around 20 days of training a year. Ackhurst says training is imperative for the division to keep skills and knowledge up to date because its reputation lies in providing expert help.

Things are looking up for the training industry too. While it has been a bit doom-and-gloom during the last couple of years, the collective feeling is optimistic about the future, with many training companies seeing inquiry and demand increases in the last 12 months. Also, the introduction of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 has been a good boost for business.

“It is picking up,” says Redman. “At the moment I am really basing that on the increased level of inquiry that we are seeing and the type of inquiries too—there is real intestest in the lastest Mirosoft offering.”

Know what you need

First of all, however, you should conduct a skills assessment to see exactly what your department needs. Most training providers can provide this.

Some lingo for you: in the world of training, providers are known as Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and skill assessments are referred to as a training needs analysis.

For a fee, an RTO will come out to your office and conduct a training needs analysis. A good RTO will actually conduct the analysis with you and transfer the skills so you can do it on an ongoing basis. It is also important to pick a good RTO for the analysis because it is most likely you will stick with them for the actual training as well. Unfortunately finding a good trainer isn’t an easy task. Actually, finding a trainer at all isn’t an easy task because they tend to not advertise. Most RTOs we spoke to find new business through word of mouth, so you will need to brush up on your networking skills and ask around.

If you already know what course you are after, for example a Cisco certification, then you are probably best off visiting the Cisco Web site to find a list of its preferred training suppliers, this should help narrow down the search.

Redman also recommends talking to the actual trainers, and visiting the premises to inspect the classrooms and equipment.

What can you get?
Richard Gordon of In Learning, a training company that specialises in e-learning for IT courses, splits IT training into five areas:

• IT certification—self study animals—people who are motivated and want to get into the industry. It’s still a very clear and recognised benchmark for employers of IT staff;
• Developers—a strange breed whose whole existence depends on staying up to date on programming and developer tools;
• Network administration—normally requiring skills upgrades for new operating systems or networks;
• Desktop applications—applicable to every job function using a desktop computer and standard office productivity software; and
• Soft skills—personal and professional development programs. Gordon believes soft skills will be the fastest growing area of training, which he also thinks is well suited to the e-learning environment, partly because management principles stay the same over time.

Dimension Data, a long time training provider of technical IT training, has recently branched out into soft skills training. Just a couple of months ago Di Data started up five soft skills courses (time management, leadership, teams, customers, and communication) aimed at IT professionals.

“A lot of people over the last year or so have just started to identify that there is a significant gap in soft skills of IT people,” says Guy Newman, who is managing Dimension Data’s soft skills courses. “It will take off very soon. Most IT jobs out there have some kind of interpersonal skill advertised in the job . . . it’s something that IT people are required to have.”

While the soft skills make IT staff more pleasant to communicate with, Newman also thinks having these skills helps IT people to advance in the organisation.

Soft skills courses designed especially for IT professionals is a new idea and Dimension Data is testing the waters at the moment, waiting to see what the uptake will be like. All of the five courses only run for one day each and cost $395. Newman conducts the courses, currently on a six-month program alternating between Melbourne and Sydney.

How do you want it?
Once you know what you and your staff need to be trained in, next you need to decide on the type of training. By this I mean, whether you want to send staff off to an instructor-led course, whether you want it conducted in-house, or if you would rather use e-learning methods.

The most traditional—and most popular—method of training is an instructor-led course, generally held at the premises of the training provider. Most IT courses are generally no more than five days long, which is about the maximum amount of time a company can afford to have a IT member away from the office. It is also the shortest length of time needed to learn the necessary skills for many IT courses.

“Organisations do find that having someone away for five days is a difficult stretch, but unfortunately a lot of the courses are designed to be presented over five full days of instructor-led training,” says Redman.

But there are ways around it. “Where a client feels five days is just too long to be out of the office, especially if they are sending a number of staff, we are prepared to run our courses on Thursday, Friday and give them a weekend, then finish on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So there are ways we can work around it,” she explains.

Most students like instructor-led training because it combines both hands-on tuition and lecture-based tuition, it gives time away from the office, and it also feels like you are getting value for money.

Conducting training in your own office, while convenient, can be too convenient. The students are easily distracted, and IT staff are always in demand so the likelihood is that a drama (however minor) will occur and students will be called back to work.

One method gaining popularity is “train the trainer”—where the company sends one staff member off to the course on the provisio that they teach the rest of the staff when they get back. RTOs have set up courses catering to this, so the course also involves imparting teaching knowledge to the students.

However, this does have its drawbacks . . . the person being sent off to the course may not like the added pressure of having to teach it when he or she returns, and also the training may not be as effective for the rest of the staff. But it is cost effective, hence the rise in popularity.

E-learning, more than hype?

“There was a grossly over-simplified view of the e-learning environment. People saw it as the be all and end all, and a way to slash their budgets and decrease costs,” he says. “But the first lot of content that came out was just deadly boring.”

He says e-learning has come a long way since then and it is no longer just putting a text book on the screen. “[There is] video experience, some interaction, real trainers not actors, one-on-one type experiences, and [students] feel like they have the classroom on screen,” explains Gordon. He believes all of the original reasons why e-learning was going to be good are still valid, such as 24x7 access, a consistent experience, and cheaper cost than typical instructor-led training.

It can also be a good way to provide training to a large number of people. Gordon says e-learning is popular for desktop courses. The common argument against e-learning is that students rarely finish the course, but he says In Learning courses have a 97 percent completion rate.

Pricing for e-learning packages is probably different to what you would assume. Although basically just software, sales don’t work like other software packages. Instead of buying user licences, the company just pays a one-off fee and can keep the material on their server for as long as they like and can have as many staff accessing it as they like. According to Gordon, the price is scaled depending on company size.

Tell me all about it
As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to measure the ROI for training but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do any follow up. Get feedback from staff on what they thought of the course and of the trainer. If you have a lot of staff receiving training, conducting regular surveys, say every six months or annually, is a good idea.

Who's out there?

ALPHAWEST
Alphawest provides training needs analysis', IT certification career advice, and is also an authorised training provider for many major vendors, such as Microsoft, Lotus, Cisco, CheckPoint, and Novell. It also offers service guarantees on all courses.
www.alphawest.com.au

DIMENSION DATA
DiData Learning Solutions, formerly known as ComTech, specialises in technical training. DDLS claims to be ranked as one of the top 10 IT educators world wide. It has recently started a series of soft skills courses for IT staff.
www.ddls.didata.com.au

KAZ Group
Traditionally an IT outsourcing company, KAZ also offers a variety of technical training courses through its Education Services Centres, aiming to provide a total solution to its clients.
www.aspect.com.au/education

IN LEARNING
In Learning produces and distributes an extensive range of self-paced courseware including advanced network administration, IT Certification, desktop application, developer, personal, business, and professional development training. Courses are deliverable via video, CD-ROM, network, Internet, and more.
www.inlearning.com.au

MONASH IT
Monash IT provides specialist IT education and skills training to students, IT professionals and corporations requiring a customised solution. Courses include: IT project management, IT security, middleware programming, database design, network computing, and certification training.
www.monash-it.com.au

STORAGETEK LEARNING SOLUTIONS
StorageTek, in conjunction with its partners, offers a one-stop shop for all of its customers' training needs. The learning is competency-based, providing both product-specific and conceptual information. It also tailors training to the specific needs of the customer. StorageTek has also developed storage-specific certification courses.
www.storagetek.com.au

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