Guild Companies

With COMMON "setting the pace" in Indianapolis this week, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to attend this conference, as well as taking advantage of other types of training. I strive to keep up to speed with the latest technologies and with what's going on in the industry, but I sometimes feel as if I'm in the minority. You would be surprised by some of the reasons why people attend COMMON--or any training, for that matter.

The words I most often hear people use to describe the training opportunities such as those that are offered at COMMON conferences are "perk," "benefit," "carrot," or "privilege," and even "honor." And it's not just the attendees who look at training that way. Many IT vice presidents, directors, and managers view training in the same way. They see it as a way to reward the cream of the crop, or as something to offer a prospective new hire. Not only is this a twisted view of training, it's downright wrong.

Training is not a perk. It's not for the privileged few who worked the most hours or kissed the most butts. It's not something that should be used to keep employees happy. You want to keep employees happy? Pay them well and provide them with the tasks they like to do. Give them challenging but fun work environments. Those are the things that keep employees happy. Use training to keep the users happy. Use training to keep the owners or stockholders and customers happy. Use training to keep yourself in business.

Training is a right and responsibility of both the company and the employee. The company has to understand what technology is being used in its shop and ensure that its people are properly trained to use and, in the case of IT, actually program and administer that technology. And employees should do their best to keep abreast what's going on with technology in general and, most important, with the technology where they work. IT is not like other professions out there. In IT, hardware and software changes faster than you can say, "I need more training." We have a responsibility to keep our technical skills at optimal levels. And companies should ensure that we do just that. Employers should seek out quality training and require that employees attend a certain number of hours each year. Some companies see the light. They track and monitor employee training and might even reward an employee for completing his allotted amount. The training is not the reward; it is the means to getting the reward. Even if you don't employ a whole system to track and monitor training, you should be doing something to see that your employees are properly trained to perform their jobs.

One argument against training is that it is expensive. I'm pointed to the fact that the COMMON conference costs $1,295 for one person, and that doesn't include travel, hotel, and meals. A drop in the bucket, I say, compared with the potential for knowledge and the opportunity to converse with industry experts, as well as to share ideas and challenges with peers. Can you even put a price on that awesome combination?

Speaking of cost, what does it cost you not to train your employees? Are your projects getting done in the most effective and efficient manner? Is there something out there that you really need to do, but no one on your staff understands it or even knows it exits? Are you spending more time on redoing than you are on doing? Are your employees working all that overtime because they are dedicated, or not properly trained?

Your answers to those questions probably won't determine if your staff needs training, but how much training they need. Still, some of you out there have strict budgets and are having trouble justifying the cost of employee training. If that's the case, there are some alternative methods you may want to consider. First, make sure the timing is right. Don't spend money on training if an employee is not going to use the knowledge right away. You may have been burned by this before. Don't send someone to Java training if you don't plan to use Java right away in your shop. Or if you don't plan on using the technology for a while, but you are forced to send the employee to training now, plan to invest in the training even after the training session is over by allowing your employee to implement what he has learned. This implementation could be in the form of a prototype or a subsequent high-level training, given by the employee, to the rest of the group. That leads to another method of dealing with training costs. Use your employees to spread the knowledge. Send a few folks to training, and let them come back and train the rest of your staff. This might not be as good as sending the others to training, but it does reduce training costs while allowing employees to share knowledge with one another.

Another argument against training is that a company will spend the money to train employees, only to see those employees walk out the door with all the knowledge. I think those people are missing the point. They shouldn't be tying training to employee happiness. If someone is going to leave your company, he probably would leave regardless of the training offered. You need to keep employees happy, but you also need to keep them trained. Don't confuse the two. If you must be paranoid about something, be paranoid that you're not offering enough training to your employees and what that might mean to your business in the long run.

Are there limits to training? Yes, and money is one of them. It doesn't matter how good the value is. If you don't have the money to buy that value, you're in a serious bind. It's OK as an employer to expect that your employees do some research on their own to sharpen their skills. And, as employees, we should do what we can to keep current with technology, to better our development skills, and to keep abreast of industry news, without waiting for our companies to shell out the cash to do so. Productivity is another reason to set a limit on training. It's true that proper training can increase programmer productivity, but there's a balance to be met. If your employees are spending all of their time learning new technology or better ways to use the current technology, nothing will get done.

Training is a right that we all are entitled to. If you want to give me perks and privileges, give me more money, a bigger cube, free lunches, special parking spaces, and more money. How about a trip to Hawaii, all expenses paid? What about more vacation, shorter work weeks, and more realistic deadlines? These are perks--and wild fantasies. I mean, like our deadlines are going to become more realistic. Training is a right that we should claim and that employers should offer freely (as freely as they can afford). Remember, IT is a service department. We are there to serve our customers, internal and external. These customers are the ones to keep happy, and having well-trained employees is one way to ensure that those customers stay happy.