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Demonstrating the Value of IT Training
March 24, 2009
Developing an IT skills development program using cost-effective methods for each employee category in your organization is the key.
By David Leaser
In today's competitive global business climate, companies looking to improve their gross margins and increase productivity increasingly seek ways to boost employee performance and effectiveness. Skills development and training programs, often a target of budget cuts, may help organizations achieve these corporate objectives and enhance their overall corporate culture. This excerpt from a recent IBM white paper provides some recommendations on developing an IT skills development program using cost-effective methods for each employee category in your organization.
Improved Skills=Improved Organization
While many CEOs and managers intuitively understand the value of a skilled workforce, many companies fail to realize the benefits minimal improvements in employee skills can make in an organization. Further, they lack an understanding of the business areas that are impacted directly by employee skills and knowledge, including:
• Increased productivity and performance improvement
• Reduced server loads and bandwidth costs
• Stricter adherence to corporate policies
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Increased employee morale and retention
• Increased revenue
Worse, many corporate leaders underestimate the high cost of not training. Cost areas that may be impacted dramatically by the lack of an effective training program include:
• Increased down time
• Co-worker distraction
• Rework
• Increased IT/help desk support
Short of skills tests, many training organizations fail to create an instrument to measure the effectiveness of training. Increased productivity and performance improvement should provide training organizations with objective measurements that can justify the cost of training. An IBM training assessment and implementation at an energy company with 1,000 employees found that companies can save significantly on labor costs with minimal investments in employee skills development. The study concluded that training that produced an average productivity improvement of only three minutes per day would save the company at least $240,000 per year. The study was based on the assumption that the annual average employee salary was $40,000, or $20 per hour.
Collateral Saving
Companies that employ training programs that maximize the benefits of the product may see unintended savings. At a large health-care company, IBM's Software Services consultants were able to reduce server loads and bandwidth requirements by teaching employees new e-mail policies. By archiving local mail and storing large documents in shared databases, the company's employees utilized excess local workstation storage instead of shared servers and data lines.
Determining the Best Training Methods for Your Organization
To maximize returns on investments, organizations should develop a training program that matches corporate needs and types of students with available training modalities. In addition to traditional classroom training, alternative modalities can provide effective skills development for an organization, particularly if the student type is effectively matched to the training method. (See Table 1).
Table 1. Student group matched to appropriate training methods
Source: IBM Training learning recommendations
Integration with the Help Desk
Help desk training can provide a significant return on investment for an organization's training expenditures. Key benefits include:
• Faster adoption of technology
• Reduced call lengths, which leads to reduced end-user downtime
• Improved organizational morale
• Sponsorship and support of new technology
A well-trained help desk staff will advocate new technology. Conversely, poorly trained teams may question the value and benefits of new technology and communicate negative comments to callers, potentially damaging the success of a product deployment. Help desk teams also should be utilized to improve and modify training programs. By collecting Top 10 issues from the help desk, the training organization can incorporate solutions into the skills development program to mitigate future support issues.
The Bottom Line
To fully capture the value training can provide, organizations should develop a training plan that matches user preferences to training modalities and training needs. The training plan should include an instrument to measure the return on investment in categories such as productivity gains, reduced equipment usage, reduced product failure, less frequent help desk calls, improved customer service, compliance, increased employee morale/retention, and revenue gains. Help desk teams must be well trained to ensure advocacy, and they should be solicited to generate Top 10 help desk issues for future end-user training. Executive mandate may be required to ensure a successful training deployment.
David Leaser is a business development executive for IBM Lotus Education. To download IBM's white paper on the value of training, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/training.
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