IT training Is not a one-and-one event. Companies should organize regular trainings for employees, but often they make mistakes. Because of that they are not getting the return of investment they expect from trainings. Thus they decide not to organize them in the future.
CIO has some interesting “signs your IT training sucks“. While that may sound a bit rude with the aim of grabbing your attention, there are some very valid points in there.
For example that despite the IT trainings, mistakes continue to increase. If your employees continue to make the same mistakes, or end up having even more issues, that’s the best and most obvious indication that you haven’t chosen the right training.
How is that possible? One reason could be wrong goals that aren’t aligned with reality. Or expectations that are different from the capabilities of the team. This is why it’s very important to talk with the people who will undergo the training beforehand. See what they need and expect from the courses. Often employees want a completely different training which they feel it will be more beneficial to their daily work.
That ties to the second reason – staff keeps complaining. This can happen even when you’ve chosen a course which they want. Why? Because it wasn’t delivered properly. For example, they may have wanted an in-person training and got just a bunch of PDFs and eBooks to read. Or maybe they want an online video training (which are quite popular in the current days of remote work), but got mandated to travel to a classroom.
Another reason for negative feedback could be the trainer that delivered the course. Sometimes people might not get along. Or maybe the trainer wasn’t qualified. This is why it’s important to pick the right trainer and a service like the Coursedot Instructor Hub can help you out.
Training is more than a job requirement
One of the major issues for many organizations is when trainings are handled just like yet another job requirement. This is a recipe for trouble as employees won’t actually want and care about trainings and will do them just to get by.
So, it’s a team effort to find ways to make IT trainings something interesting that employees want to attend and look forward to. Depending on the organization’s culture this may be either a very easy or a very tough challenge.
One way would be to tap into the IT professional’s natural desire to improve and learn new things. Learning new skills and improving the existing ones are a great opportunity for career enhancing, too. This would mean that you have to be open to organize trainings that might not necessarily fir your company’s immediate goals, but are something which is very interesting to your team.
Also, incorporate trainings into the company growth strategy. If you only organize them when absolutely needed, you’re basically reacting to a problem. One that could have been avoided completely if there were proactive trainings. When the trainings are done with mind for the future, employees will be ready for the challenges and more confident tackling them. Thus, they will also be happier to work for your organization. Happy team = successful company.