How to strategically align employees training for corporate ROI dollars

In my 22 plus years of working in IT, one event stands out more than any other in my mind, the technicians’ belief that somehow a company is responsible for their training and professional development outside of the actual company’s business need.

The Company’s responsibility for training

I am constantly amazed at the feelings and conversations that are generated by IT personnel when a company will not pay for certification training that has nothing to do with a company’s operations.  I have heard the full gauntlet from how company ABC pays its employees for training or threats that the employee will quit if he does not get his training reimbursed.  How audacious of these technicians to expect a company to pay for their training, especially if it has nothing to do with anything the company does. After all, it is the employees’ training and if the employee feels that XYZ certificate is going to make their career then the employee should, by all means, work toward paying for and getting XYZ training.

Certification World Secrets

There are a few dark secrets in the certification world that many managers do not understand. One, certificates do not mean capability, especially when there is so much test cheating or “dumping” going on. Rather this is someone else taking a test for the employee (think foreign countries, you didn’t think the employee just wanted to go there for the great vacation potential did you?) or just “dumping” the information to use rote memory to pass a test, what has the employee actually learned?

Two, most certificates from the big label certificate mills, and I am sure you could name a few, are mostly marketing schemes created to create income and marketing focus for those training companies. Think about it, would you as a large certification organization want to market to a company that has one ABC certificate, or would you rather market to a company where they have many employees that are “certified” in your product line?

Relevant Training

So how does a company align actual IT technician capability to the needs of the company, you may want to sit down on this,…management and technical staff need to align the actual strategic plan of the company with ensuring that the people working in that company are properly trained with “RELEVANT” training, not necessarily certifications. 

Sorry IT technicians out there, but the latest certification you want may not be needed currently within the company.  Yes, I am aware that working in government there may be certification needs, this would go in line with the company aligning strategic planning to requirements. In general, though certification training does not train a person for the environment they work in, “WHAT?” your saying. It is true XYZ certificate is used more by the certifying company to go after work themselves, again think about this, if I am ABC certifying company and I have 40,000 XYZ certified technicians, that means that ABC company can train and has the technical capability themselves. You didn’t think that ABC certifying company created all those certification tracks to better your company, did you?

If you did then you do need to be a lot more involved in your companies alignment of training to need. This is why training should be such that your companies processes and needs are inclusive in the training and not just a certificate program, which may or may not, be what you need to continue your operations and get your company to that next step in their business strategic alignment.

And that is it, those are the big secrets to corporate IT training aligning with the corporate strategic planning. Understand that IT needs to be focused on ensuring ease of resource use.  Money spent on training is relevant and actually necessary.  Last but far from least, test your personal yourself. Any trainer will be happy to work with a company to ensure that a company’s employees are at the skill levels needed to be successful. After all, why would you not use your trainer to assist in gauging your staffs’ capability?