Why Training Matters

Are you considered a critical part of your organization? With so many things going on in the world, uncertainty in business is part of everyday life. If you are not the first technical person your organization or customers turn to when something needs to be implemented or fixed, you may not even be considered critical to the business. With a struggling economy and industry-wide layoffs that seem to come out of nowhere every quarter, it’s important to stay on top of the curve and be one of the critical players in your company.

It seems like common sense, yet so many shops fail to keep their teams trained and refreshed on the technologies that drive their business and those of their customers. Minor mistakes can lead to catastrophic problems. HPE recently reported that 28% of customers have experienced data center downtime due to human error and that up to 70% of server outages can be tied back to configuration errors.

Yes, people make mistakes. How much would production system downtime cost your company? Outages can easily cost a small company $100,000 and over a million dollars if you’re a large company. It’s likely a small investment in ensuring your teams are regularly and properly trained, which could save you from taking a massive hit and keep your organization at the top of the food chain.

Back in graduate school, I read a book that pretty much changed the direction of my life. “Human Competence,” by Thomas F. Gilbert. Widely considered the father of Human Performance Technology, this work is the gold standard in the field of Instructional and Performance Technology. The potential for improved performance (PIP) in individuals and organizations can be measured, and even the smallest steps can make a vast difference in outcomes. Yes, Worth = Value.

Competence and Qualification programs are coming more into play as businesses look for improved results and work outputs. Most IT shops require certifications to work on basic MS products and for Program Managers to maintain qualifications or training units to keep their skills current and recognized. What metrics, requirements, or programs do you have for your NonStop administrators, system managers, or developers?

How often does your company test disaster recovery systems or perform an operating system upgrade? It’s easy to overlook simple things like changes in product specs or versions. Do you stay up to speed with the SMPL/HPML, new release documentation, support notes, hot stuffs, GNSC logs? It’s all too easy to miss something along the way, especially if you’re jumping over release versions. Maybe you’d like to test your migration plans on NonStop training systems and get comfortable practicing it first. Error-free performance does not happen organically. Whether it be flying and maintaining commercial aircraft, providing critical healthcare, performing life-saving surgery, or managing your company’s most important cog in the wheel. You run NonStop systems for a reason, and your teams must be NonStop competent.

Infrequent training alone cannot change the trajectory or success of your business. To be truly successful, management must also adopt a behavior of continuously training and educating individuals to update and improve their skills and knowledge. Even gurus require frequent refresher and delta training. That’s how you benefit your business and exceed quality metrics for your organization. Performance support from managers is a critical key to improving the value of your teams. That only becomes possible when you habitually provide access to training and offer incentives for accomplishing and completing courses or gains in skills and knowledge.

NonStop training is still the first place to look for help as they go well beyond providing an extensive curriculum of hands-on courses. They offer skills and knowledge testing through the NonStop Professional achievement program, private dedicated boot camps, frequent technical webinars, an archive of NonStop presentations, tools to quickly access technical information, and virtual or physical system access and services. 2024 is underway. Now is the time to ask your manager or sales rep about getting a batch of NonStop training credits to use throughout the year.. at the very least, check out the public schedule of standard courses on www.NonStop-Academy.com

So, back to the original question: are you and everyone on your team indispensable and considered a critical part of the organization? There is no diversity in technical training. You are either competent, or you are not. Those who are not tend to be the first to go when the bean-counters come calling.

That’s why training matters.