IT and IT training equal workforce optimisation. Times are tough, and all that. We all know it, and you don’t need another column bleating about it, so let’s just take that as a given.

So the next question is: ‘Given that times are tough, what does that mean to IT, and IT skills advancement and training especially?’

For a start, it usually means tightening budgets, and for the truly less forward-thinking organisations, tightening IT budgets and even worse, tightening IT training budgets.

Why do we say ‘less forward-thinking’ organisations? It’s simple really: as any first-year economics student will tell you, the key to saving costs permanently and sustainably is increasing efficiency and productivity, and the point is, IT is efficiency and productivity. IT, and the use of technology, are clearly the answer to increasing productivity in organisations.

Whether it’s in the time savings of core staff knowing how to use their tools properly, the reduction in support costs from the same, the improvements from developers who understand query optimisation and the concepts of interface design, or just the feel-good factor of having staff that aren’t frustrated by their tools every five minutes, knowing how to use IT to its best advantage makes things easier, faster and more accurate – or at least that’s the theory. But if you needed me to tell you that, you probably shouldn’t be reading IT Brief!

The difficulty in times such as these is that, instead of concentrating on optimising the efficiency of people assets to achieve performance (and hence cost) savings, mixed with investing in preparing for when times get better (and consequently getting the jump on the competition), the knee-jerk reaction is to cut, cut, cut. Whilst some cuts will always prove necessary, any good investor will tell you that the best time to invest is when the chips are down, and investing in training in IT is no exception.

The present government almost got it right with the concept of a four-day week with the fifth day being subsidised training. Unfortunately this turned into a 4.5-day week, then effectively a 4.75-day week, and finally lost the training part – oh well! As a wise man once said, “A plan without a budget is but a dream”, and we all know the government doesn’t have a pot of gold either. (And really, one could mount a good argument to say that training staff isn’t really the government’s role, even if the concept might win a vote or two.)

That being said, the fact is, investing in training and workforce optimisation brings results, and the current economic situation is temporary. Whether temporary means a few more months or a little longer is somewhat irrelevant; the world will keep on spinning, the sky won’t fall on our heads, and the recession will end. When it does, those that positioned themselves and their organisations to accelerate out of the curve will be the winners.Training is not exactly a hard-sell to staff. Robert Walters is the latest in a number of recruiters to report in their second quarter update that staff with IT skills are more likely to stay employed – a point that shouldn’t be lost on those keen to weather the storm with their current employers.

I would suggest that this is the core job of C-level managers: to position their organisations to take advantage of market conditions in the future. Hence, couldn’t one argue that those who don’t position themselves during tough times by investing in lifting the IT skills of their staff, or even worse, cut back in these areas, are not particularly forward-thinking, and arguably not doing the job they’re there to do?

This may be a simplistic view and we all have budgets to think about, but this is one area that can bring about tangible cost savings without cuts. As Gandhi wisely said: “The future depends on what we do in the present.” Perhaps he should have been in IT. 

Paul Matthews

Paul Matthews is the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Computer Society (NZCS), the professional body of the IT sector. NZCS is chiefly concerned with raising the professional and educational standards of ICT professionals and computing skills of the public, working in collaboration with others to achieve these goals. Before running the Society Matthews founded and managed several IT-related businesses.

Phone: +64 4 473 1043Email: paul.matthews@nzcs.org.nzWeb: www.nzcs.org.nz