If you are an IT manager, you’ve undoubtedly felt the pinch of the IT skills gap. You’re not alone.
When CompTIA conducted its 2013 workforce study, more than half of the 1,256 business and IT executives surveyed reported being “concerned about the quality and quantity of IT talent available for hire.”
Not surprisingly, many IT organizations choose to close the skills gap with retraining rather than new hires. In the high-demand mobility space, 57% of businesses said they would only retrain or retrain with a few hires and contract workers, according to InformationWeek’s “State of IT Staffing Survey.”
But don’t stop there. Once you’ve retrained staff to take advantage of specific advances, offering them the opportunity to further develop in an area of interest and expertise is one of the most effective tools for retaining talent, according to the 2013 Kelly Global Workforce Index (KGWI).
Among the 120,000 respondents from 31 countries across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions, when asked what their direct manager could do to improve job satisfaction or engagement, the top response (aside from salary, benefits, and promotion) was training opportunities.
If you’re worried that educating your staff will just help them land a different job, your fears are misplaced.
While some hiring managers are nervous that high-demand IT professionals will use additional training and certifications to seek jobs at other companies, the KGWI findings suggest that fear is misplaced. Of the 60% of global workers who are either actively seeking or considering further training, their number-one reason was to improve their opportunities at their current company. This agrees with our own internal findings that professionals consider the opportunity to increase their technical knowledge to be one of the top benefits of VMware certification.
So how are top IT organizations choosing to provide ongoing education to their teams? Hands-on training tops the KGWI list, while the majority of businesses in the CompTIA study say they expect IT certifications to increase in importance over the next two years.
More than 60% say teams of IT staff holding certifications benefit from a common foundation of knowledge. The new VMware Certified Associate (VCA) program can provide your staff with a common language around cloud, data center virtualization, and workforce mobility. By standardizing the language your staff uses, you reduce on-boarding and project ramp time.
With free eLearning and affordable certification exam fees, VCA is a cost-effective way to improve team effectiveness, support staff career growth, and increase loyalty to the company.
