Improving staff skills and offering training is crucial to
motivation and retention but is often overlooked. Lindsay Nicolle
examines how employers need to shake up their ideas before staff
move on
Staff
development has never been the sexiest of responsibilities for IT
managers. But it is an area you would be wise not to neglect during
the downturn as experts agree investment will be useful when IT
prosperity (and a fluid job market) returns.
Mechanisms for
staff development range from:
- Broadening IT skills knowledge within and outside the needs of
current IT projects
- Teaching so-called soft skills such as interpersonal,
presentation and teamworking skills
- Nurturing the work and whole life ambitions and aspirations of
your employees, as identified in development reviews and informal
chats.
In addition,
helping staff to achieve a better work/life balance by, for
example, implementing family-friendly policies, can create an
atmosphere more conducive to successful overall development.
That may
translate to allowing sabbaticals for career breaks, secondments
overseas or to other areas of the business or academia, part-time
working, temporary job swaps, or even funding voluntary work in IT
where it helps the business' local community.
Count
the cost
While some of
these moves appear to be expensive, they could save you money by
reducing office overheads and boosting the retention rates of
valuable staff.
It seems that
the answer to staff development is to do whatever it takes to help
individuals reach their maximum potential in their particular jobs.
Idealistic maybe, given current budgetary and headcount
constraints, but this is the key to ensuring the IT department is
ready to serve evolving global business needs when the economic
upturn comes.
As Andrew
Harvey-Price, research director of public/private sector training
partnership E-skills UK, notes, "The development of our IT
professional workforce is fundamental if the country is to meet the
challenges of the digital economy, raise productivity and increase
competitiveness."
But are IT
bosses rising to that challenge? "No" is the emphatic answer from
Peter Skyte, national secretary of the Information Technology
Professionals Association
(www.msf-itpa.org.uk),
part of the UK's second largest trade union, Amicus.
"Our 12,000 IT
professional members tell us that too much staff development is
done on a just-in-time basis and is unimaginative. Plus the level
and degree of training is pretty poor. Worse, IT professionals fare
worst if they work for IT sector companies as opposed to IT-using
firms."
Key
assets
This is despite
the fact that the key asset of most organisations is people, not
capital equipment - as recognised by the people management experts,
the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The CIPD is
working on developing a toolkit to help managers in all types of
employment to evaluate the contribution, talent and progression of
their staff.
Meanwhile, it
would help if employers had an accurate assessment of their staff's
competencies. Conducting personal development reviews helps, but
for busy IT managers a software tool that can run a skills audit,
such as those from AdVal, Docent, Personic, Sciigo and SmartForce,
or a web-based competence development and management system, such
as Competence Online from IT training firm, Global Knowledge, might
be the answer.
Competence
Online creates wide-ranging staff development programmes covering
areas such as soft skills, behavioural analysis, knowledge-based
training and company-based certification.
Certainly,
employers of IT staff appear to need such help rather desperately.
Only one in seven IT professionals received any training in the
last quarter of 2002, according to ITPA research. Furthermore, the
skills taught only related to current IT deployments or
projects.
Skyte argues
that employers should not only train staff more but also plan ahead
and teach them skills that will benefit the business - and the
individual - in the future.
Training is an investment
"The best
companies view training as an investment, not a cost," he says. "It
is a fact of life that you will lose some people if you train them
but you will also lose them if you don't - and it is cheaper to
train than to hire.
"Companies that
are not necessarily the best payers have good recruitment and
retention rates because they invest in developing their staff."
In fact,
investment in IT training is beginning to show signs of recovery,
according to a survey of IT training sector profits and revenues by
IT Skills Research. The most popular course run by Learning Tree
International is Windows 2000, followed by Oracle, SQL Server, web
management, Java, Visual Basic, project management, software
engineering and networking.
Rigid
structures
But
insufficient training is just one enemy of staff development. Staff
can also be held back by too rigid, hierarchical job structures. It
is up to employees to lobby against this.
Iain Smith,
director of IT staffing consultancy Diaz Research, suggests
re-engineering career structures so that they have clearer, more
relevant and development-focused career benchmarks.
Chiefly, loosen
the link between career benchmarks and pay, and dismantle the
hierarchical job structures favoured by most organisations.
"Progress" would then no longer be judged by where you are on the
corporate ladder but by how much closer you feel you are to
achieving your full potential.
This idea may
be too radical for many but some kind of action may be needed soon.
The morale of IT staff is among the lowest across a range of
managers in key industry sectors analysed last November by
recruitment group Reed.
Nearly six out
of 10 say their trust in management has fallen during the past
year, and motivation is also way down. Typically, the lack of a
visible career path and poor line management are to blame.
Low spirits
among workers are understandable given the many IT job cuts and
cancelled projects of recent months as companies batten down their
hatches to weather the economic storm.
However,
managers have no such excuse. A stagnant jobs market means your
employees are unlikely to leave for greener pastures. So now is the
time to foster individual talents and implement career development
plans of worth.
You may be
reluctant to invest in new IT skills training because the future
directions of IT and the business may be relatively uncertain. But
there is a strong argument for spending money on honing staff
skills in IT bread-and-butter areas that could save the business
money whatever happens.
For example,
skills in IT security, rapid development tools, structured
methodologies and software auditing.
In addition,
there is always a need for IT staff to improve their management,
presentation and communications skills, and their understanding of
the business.
The gap between
business and IT has blurred in recent years, but there is still an
us-and-them mentality in many organisations which does nothing for
a company whose branding needs all its staff to sing from the same
hymn sheet.
For those firms
with very tight training budgets but a conscience about it,
encouraging staff to broaden their skills by volunteering their IT
services to the local community may be an attraction. The move can
add value to the business as well as being a challenging and
rewarding experience.
Clearly,
employers could be doing much more to develop their IT workers than
they are at present. Without action, when the good times return, IT
assets will surely vote with their feet all over again.
Business in
the Community
(www.bitc.org.uk), a UK
membership organisation founded to improve the commercial world's
impact on society, has created checklists for action for employers
keen to get involved in volunteering. See
www.cci-resource.org.uk
Case
study: Nottingham City Council
In recent years
Nottingham City Council first moved to unitary status, then coped
with Y2K, and then undertook a project to completely re-position
its whole IT infrastructure around Unix/Oracle, decommissioning
ageing ICL/Fujitsu VME systems. All in a weekend - well, not
quite!
In the process,
all the council's 100 IT staff have had to learn new skills. The
high degree of change, a focus on staff development, and skills
supplements on salaries have helped to keep staff motivated and
committed to working for the council, says the head of IT, Paul
Martin.
Before each
change, Martin assessed his team's skills gaps against planned
projects. But he also took account of those skills identified from
staff development reviews as being attractive to individuals and of
potential value to the business, even though they were not
specifically related to current business needs.
Nurturing
individuals' aspirations in this way can be of long-term benefit to
a business since it can help to reduce staff churn. Martin then
allocated a training fund.
Protect
training budget
"The one budget
we don't cut is our IT training budget," Martin says. "We try and
keep that at the same level each year. It helps staff retention and
morale."
He adds,
"Formal training has been extremely useful, but I would guard
against sheep-dipping people where everyone attends the same
training course and some people use their new skills immediately
while others have to wait weeks or months - that is not valuable.
Even if it costs more, it is better to teach people skills they can
use immediately."
Post-technical
training, Martin has set up teams consisting of business and
technical people to encourage a cross-over of knowledge and
understanding of business operations. However, being a member is
not compulsory. Staff are treated as individuals, and allowed to
opt out if they want to.
Martin values
mentoring and coaching of staff but advises careful management. "It
is true that getting the most from your IT staff has never been
more important, but what you must guard against is overloading them
to the point at which they cannot cope.
Staff
development means nurturing the abilities of each member of staff
as far as they are able, and not stretching them beyond that."