Why Technical Skills Training Is The Best Investment To Make In Your Team
You know that by encouraging learning and growth you are also creating happier, more engaged and productive workers, so you’ve decided to invest in an eLearning program for your team. Great!
Now, the hardest part: Which to choose? It’s tempting to go with the broadest possible offering in an effort to provide something for everyone. In reality, though, you should be asking yourself “What should my employees be focusing on? What does my business need?”. The answer to that is simple.
What skill set can save your company money, and is applicable across departments, industries, and company sizes? Technical skills and digital literacy. Here’s why technical skills training is crucial for your team’s development:
- Execute on business plans more quickly.
Giving everyone in your company a foundation in digital literacy and technical skills puts everyone on the same page. Now your executive team can make more informed decisions, your designers and marketers can work directly with your development team, and managers can make better estimates of the time needed to complete projects. By moving as one, you can reach company goals faster. - Stay on top of rapidly changing technologies.
Your developers need to engage in ongoing learning to stay up-to-date with the latest tech. But what about the rest of your team? Maybe your support team doesn’t need to build an app, but understanding how it’s made and recent updates can help them field customer questions. Your business can only compete in a digitally complex world if your employees are comfortable living and working in it. - Provide opportunities for internal mobility and bring development in-house.
The hardest positions to recruit for are technical – and that outlook isn’t changing anytime soon. By 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be a gap between the number of open technical positions and skilled workers able to fill them of nearly 1.4 million. New hires can be risky, too – they need training, on-boarding, and adjustment periods, and even then they may not end up being a good cultural fit. Why not create your own tech talent? TechCrunch has suggested that the specific technical skills and experience required by companies may need to be addressed by the companies themselves. By nurturing your own talent, you get high-skilled employees with experience specific to your needs and company, and your new developer gets a great new job without having to change companies. Plus, promoting current employees to new technical roles saves you money in recruitment costs, loss of productivity and salary, and they are already familiar with and loyal to the company. Companies that create internal hiring programs see an increase in employee career satisfaction and retention - always a good thing.
The benefits of technical skills training sound great, right? Luckily, eLearning platforms aimed at teaching technical skills to whole teams are now on the market. When shopping for the right platform for you, just make sure it is:
- Trackable.
Using one system to track the progress of a set of skills is more motivating and measurable for your employees, and will allow you to see the impact of your investment. Make sure it you can easily download usage data and manage users. - Engaging.
Interactive content that features videos, quizzes and elements of gamification all make sure users actually want to learn the content and aids in retention. Leaderboards are also a great feature, allowing a little friendly competition to drive teams or individuals to excel in training. - High quality.
Not all content is created equal. Choose content developed by experienced, professional instructors to ensure that your team is getting the most up-to-date, easily understood lessons. - Focused.
Breadth of topics can be distracting. Give your team access to a platform designed specifically to teach technical skills - it should include intuitive interfaces, clear learning paths and training in your company’s tech stack.
Ultimately, everyone benefits from increased technical skills – businesses get more productive, multifunctional workers, and employees gain marketable skills and feel more engaged. Be confident that by choosing an eLearning platform focused on technical skills training and digital literacy, you’re giving your company and workers a leg up in an increasingly technical business environment.
