Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2020 - 27

When training is approved, training
effectiveness is of the utmost importance.

Professionals are training in record
numbers, but 79% of IT decision-makers
are reporting worsening, businessimpacting skills gaps. Something is
wrong. Professionals and organizations
are not coordinating their training
delivery format selection with how
critical the skill need is to accomplishing
their goals. This is a costly mistake when
opportunities for success are becoming
more difficult to find.
As more organizations digitally transform
into tech companies, the shelf life of
existing skills is expiring faster than ever.
Similarly, not developing new skills in
your most valuable asset - your people
- has significant repercussions. The
tech industry is experiencing firsthand
what happens when continuous people
development is and is not prioritized.
The effect of the skills economy is being
acutely felt, and organizations with the
right skills are rising to the top.
The data used throughout this article is
from the world's largest global annual
survey of IT staff and decision-makers
- the IT Skills and Salary Report. It
has uncovered troubling data that
illuminates why organizational skills
gaps are growing so rapidly.

THOSE WHO NEED
SKILLS ARE FACING
UPHILL BATTLES
The realities that result from the "we're
too busy" or "we can hire our way
out of it" excuses are catching up to
organizations at threatening rates. Top
talent is difficult to find and comes at
a premium salary - with salaries the
highest they've ever been in the 13
years of the report. Additional impacts
of skills gaps include:

IT decisionmakers reporting
increased stress
on employees.

Those dealing with
talent recruitment
and retention
challenges.

once? Organizations ask their employees
to do a lot - especially in IT. Technology
doesn't stop, and neither do they. Fifty
four percent of IT professionals said their
current workloads are higher than the
previous year, leaving less and less time
to develop new skills to keep driving
the business forward. So, when training
is approved, training effectiveness is of
the utmost importance.

RATING THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF TRAINING
Those that say they
aren't meeting
quality objectives.

Those that suffer
from increased
project durations.

SKILLS GAPS COST HOW
MANY HOURS A YEAR!?
60% of IT decision-makers say skills
gaps cost between 3-8 hours of
productivity per employee per week.
In a 50 work-week year, that's between
150-400 hours of productivity lost.

Alarmingly, the survey also revealed that
only 58% of IT decision-makers have a
training budget, and, of that group, only
60% authorized training in 2019. Even
when they have training budgets, they're
not using them. But when we do train, are
we going about it the right way?

PERCEIVED TRAINING
EFFECTIVENESS VS. WHAT
IS ACTUALLY BEING TAKEN
Have you ever met an IT professional
who wasn't juggling a million things at

Over 11,200 IT professionals were
asked to rate the effectiveness of
five ways to train: an informal training
session at work (peer-to-peer, ad hoc),
web-based on-demand (self-paced),
live instructor-led online (virtual),
instructor-led classroom (out of office)
and instructor-led onsite training.
Instructor-led training (ILT) was the clear
winner, which shouldn't be surprising
(seen in Figure 1). ILT provides real-time
interaction between the learner and an
expert instructor who has experience
and expertise. These subject matter
experts (SMEs) can cater the content
specifically to their audience, create
a rich and collaborative environment
conducive to learning, and can see when
the light bulbs do and don't turn on in a
person's mind. On-demand is one-way,
less structured and questions may linger
rather than being resolved in the class.

ACTUAL TRAINING TAKEN
IN THE PAST YEAR
Those same professionals were then
asked what formal training they took in
the past year (seen in Figure 1 on page
28). Web-based, on-demand training
was the most-used training method

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MAGAZ INE -AGILE LEARNING 2020 I WWW. T RAININGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2020

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