Have you ever wondered why do some organizations invest heavily in IT training, yet see very little change in the performance of their employees? My article this week will aim to answer this question based on a practical experience via my engagements with different institutions, be it academic, private companies and/or some of the government agencies. Hopefully by the end of the article, you would have a better idea for what organizations should probably avoid and consider in order not to spend significant time and money sending employees to courses, workshops and certification programmes that doesn’t produce real-world experience.
Imagine two organizations trying to strengthen their IT capabilities. The first identifies a popular IT course, registers ten employees and sends them for training. They attend the sessions, complete the exercises, receive their certificates and return to work. Everyone is happy (employees mostly), and training target achieved (HR and senior management mostly). But then reality catches up. The employees return to their desks and discover that the technology they learned is being used differently in their organization. The systems are different. The architecture is different. The codebase is different. Even the way the technology is applied to the business is different. Sound familiar? Did the training really prepare them for the job or just gave them days off from work and handed them certificate as proof attendance?
Now imagine another organization taking a different approach. Instead of asking, “Which course should we send our employees to?” it asks, “What do we actually need our employees to be able to do?” The training is then designed around the organization's technology stack, systems, products, codebase and business requirements. This is the difference between generic training and customized training.
Generic training certainly has its place. It can provide employees with a foundation and expose them to new technologies and concepts. But in IT, where organizations often operate highly specialized systems, generic training can sometimes stop at knowledge without translating that knowledge into performance.
Customized training however takes a different route. The learning is connected to the environment in which employees will actually work. One of the academy’s model that I am associated with (Introduct) trains people on the customer's technology stack and codebase, incorporating specific technologies, approaches and products into the curriculum. What impressed me about its Academy model is the thinking behind it. Rather than treating training as a standard course that an organization simply sends employees to attend, the approach can be built around the customer's actual technology environment. The objective is not simply to teach someone Java, JavaScript or another technology, but to prepare them to work within a specific organization's systems and requirements.
The customer examples make the concept even more interesting. One Estonian IT company had six individuals move from their existing technology backgrounds into Elixir programming. Their training included practical, hands-on work on real-world initiatives. After completing the programme, they integrated into the company's team and began contributing value. Another organization needed developers for a complex industrial billing system built on Java and JavaScript. Four graduates joined the project, quickly understood its domain-specific requirements and contributed to new billing modules and data-processing improvements. They eventually became permanent members of the engineering team. These examples made me look differently at the word “training.”
Training should not simply be about transferring knowledge from a trainer to an employee. It should ultimately help an organization solve its problems. For IT leaders, perhaps the more important question is not, “How many employees did we train this year?” It should be: “How much better can our employees perform because of the training they received?” Because a certificate can prove that someone completed training. Only performance can prove that the training worked. Trust me. Until we catch up again next week, build your team capabilities, and don’t just train generally.
TARIQ AL BARWANI
The writer is strategic adviser, businessman and motivational speaker
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