The value of end users
If you were educated prior to the mid 1980’s you will not have received any considerable amount of IT education in school, college or university. Your IT knowledge will have come initially from training by an employer or from adult education courses or from your own inquisitiveness. If you are fortunate then you are probably quite proficient with most of the applications you use on a daily basis, but for the majority your skills will be at best minimal and at worst non existent. The fact that this group makes up the vast majority of the working population is a major problem!
A lack of IT skills reduces an individuals ability to access further learning, informal learning and employment opportunities. For business and the wider economy it reduces our flexibility, dynamism and competitiveness. However, the good news is that within this group is a vast pool of work, life and management experience. In fact all the attributes that IT orientated organisations state they lack most. For organisations to take advantage of this pool of latent experience all they have to do is value the wider benefits of end user training. By doing this they can unlock individual potential, help people see technology as a business enabler and empower a workforce to improve it’s own productivity.
This is not a call for blanket investment in end user training, it is an argument as to why cutting back on end user training in budgets is unwise. It is a prompt to say when planning a new implementation or new system, how about using the opportunity to broaden the organisations skills base. People are a good investment they grow in value with the investment and they increase an organisations capability to deal with the challenges of today and tomorrow.
David Field
David Field joined The Synergy Group in 1998 with Daniel Hanlon to establish the Training division. After graduating from Cardiff University with an Honours Degree in Business Administration in 1996, David specialised in IT services for the public sector. In 1998 David joined The Synergy Group as a senior consultant and rapidly rose to the role of Director. Over the next six years David co-developed the strategy for moving the training division from a small enterprise to the UK’s 15th largest IT training provider. David is a Fellow of the Institute of IT Training and a member of the British Computer Society.
Blog date
23 October 2007
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