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.
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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.”
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