IT Staff Development

Blended Learning

Whether working on an employee engagement initiative, or a leadership development program, it’s not enough that you design, present, communicate, and deliver your content in a logically convincing manner. To ensure success, you must also engage people emotionally. This is the lesson learned from many training programs, employee communication processes, and culture change efforts. Research undertaken by Bersin & Associates found that blended learning programs are perhaps the highest impact, lowest cost way to drive major corporate initiatives.

One of the big things they found was that once you have to make “media” or “blend” decisions, you are essentially doing “portfolio management.” People need a methodology to help decide when to use a webinar, when to use a conference call, and when to build a complex simulation or online course. When you create a financial portfolio, you start with your goals – factor in risk, time, and budget. In blended learning, the factors are similar:

What is the business problem or goal?
What is the learning problem which you believe is creating this business problem?
What are the characteristics of the audience?
What are the characteristics of the content?
What kind of measurement do we need? And how much?

These are not easy questions - and they shouldn't be. But you cannot hope to answer these questions rationally without understanding what business cost, benefit, and processes you need to be successful. This is fundamental to learning development in the workplace.

Learning Models

Most people responsible for staff development would agree that the goal of staff development is change in individuals' knowledge, understanding, behaviors, skills - and in, in some cases, also change in values and beliefs.
The Joyce and Showers "model" for staff development includes five "components", each of which needs to be included for effective "development". These components are:

Presentation of Theory (or description of a new skill or behavior). This description is typically thirty minutes to one or two hours in length, and is provided in a one-way delivery mode to a passive audience. Imparting knowledge, as an outcome, should be accomplished in this single session.
Demonstration or modeling of the new strategy or skill. As in the firs component, delivery is one-way and no audience action is required.
Initial practice in a protected or simulated setting. The audience participates, trying out the new skill.
Providing structured and open-ended feedback about performance of the practice.
Coaching. As the new idea or skill is being applied and tried in the workplace, follow up attention to help with the actual practice must be provided.

For staff development to be effective, all components of the learning model need to be included.

IT Talent Development, Succession Planning, and Leadership Development

Developing IT Talent

Developing IT Talent is a lot more than training courses. It starts even before an employee joins the organisation, and is not restricted to their current role in the organisation. In Developing IT Talent we include:

Skills Audit / Competency Needs Analysis
Learning and Development
Succession Planning
Leadership Development

Skills Audit / Competency Needs Analysis

A Skills Audit, or as we like to call it a Competency Needs Analysis is more than a Training Needs Analysis. It is key to understanding what competencies the organisation needs, what competencies currently exist, and what the competency "gaps" are to ensure that the organisation has the capacity to deliver its goals and objectives.
The Competency Needs Analysis is a process that can be used to identify the skill gaps in an individual, a team, a department or an organization. The outcomes of the Competency Needs Analysis are:

Areas and individuals where competency improvement is needed.
A targeted analysis of development needs.
A list of people who need specific development.
Information that can be used for dynamic succession planning.
Information that can be used for other HR purposes such as internal selection.

But, to do a Competency Needs Analysis, you first need to define the competencies needed. This is where TalentAlign can help. Using the Competency Profiles created on TalentAlign can make the Competency Needs Analysis more consistent, more relevant to the job, and more accurate.

Learning and Development

Organizations globally are having difficulty finding creative problem solvers in an era where "IT genes" exist in just about every job, even those that seemingly are irrelevant to technology. And an even greater problem is that enrolment in Computer Science at tertiary institutions globally, and in South Africa, is dropping alarmingly.
Businesses are, therefore, having to find more creative ways of shoring up the IT Talent and this could include:

Identifying potential employees at school level and offering them a bursary to study Computer Science

Creating "internships" that bring school-leavers on board for a period of dedicated, workplace-based education and training

Identifying current non-IT employees with the ability to learn IT and moving them to the IT department

Creating "fast-track" growth opportunities to grow people more quickly through the organisation and thus leaving more space for entry level employees

For these and other more traditional training and development needs, having a good Competency Framework that defines jobs and levels throughout the IT organisation is critical for success. The TalentAlign Competency Framework is a proven and cost-effective way of forming a foundation for people development within any IT organisation.

Succession Planning

Succession Planning is no longer the preserve for the more senior roles in the organization. Succession Planning is being implemented throughout organizations, and especially for the identified critical roles in the organization.
Furthermore, what was originally merely a list of possible candidates for a role, is now a fullblown process for identifying high-potential talent to fill these key positions within the company.
Succession Plans are now being reviewed at an aggregate level. Many organizations are reviewing Succession Planning from a number of different perspectives such as departmental, functional, geographic as well as at a business level. Doing this allows business leaders (particularly those responsible for these areas) to get an a better understanding of the talent that exists - while also providing strategic forums for exchanging feedback about the talent. Many organizations now present this information to their boards of directors as a standard part of the process - part of their Governance initiative.
Succession Planning needs to be owned by line managers, facilitated by HR, and actively led by the CEO who has a key role in ensuring that there is a healthy pipeline of potential leaders for the future of the organisation.
Attaching the Succession Planning process to a Competency Framework can provide a useful starting point for defining the requirements and evaluating an individual's potential for the role. The TalentAlign Competency Framework includes competencies related to all levels in the IT organisation and, coupled with our tools and services, is a useful means to assist in the Succession Planning process.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development, together with Succession Planning represent the biggest talent issues organizations face today. So it stands to reason that they are the key areas in which companies today are spending a high percentage of their training and development budgets.
But is there a difference between "Leadership" and "Management"? Most gurus in Leadership say there is. "Leaders Lead People, Managers Manage Tasks" seems to be the main difference. So, can anyone be a "Leader"? The answer is also an emphatic "Yes". A "Manager" HAS to also be a "Leader" but a "Leader" does not necessarily have to be a "Manager"
So where does that leave "Leadership Development"?

"Can today's average salesperson become tomorrow's "right-for-the-job" sales leader? Even though the work is different, our experience demonstrates that he can because potential is not fixed." "The Leadership Pipeline" by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel

In this cutting-edge book on Leadership, Drotter et al identify seven stages of "Managerial Leadership" and highlight the development changes that need to take place at each "Passage" from one level to the other in order to be successful at the next layer. This is depicted in the diagram below, with "Technical Leadership" shown on the brown line.

Below are summaries of articles. To read the article in full, click on the relevant link. To return, click "back" on your Internet Browser.

IT Competency Management

From Job-based to Competency-based Organizations
The concepts of competency building and performance management are imposing new thought-processes in IT. Traditionally Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management has been guided by the concept of jobs being the “basic building blocks” of organizations –a concept that is founded firmly in the bureaucracy of the “industrial” era. read more ...

footer

About Us • Terms • Register • Order Process• Newsletter • Pricing • Useful Links • Contact Us