Motivate and Develop IT Employees with an IT Training Plan

Training and education is one of the most powerful motivators for IT employees. It always ranks in the top 3 reasons why IT people stay with their company while money usually ranks 7^th or lower.

What this means is that you should have a training focus for every employee in your organization.

A focused training plan will do a lot for your IT organization:

Reduce or eliminate knowledge silos and technical skill gaps
Develop skills depth
Motivate employees

Employees are motivated by the fact you are investing in their professional development and doing things that will make their job easier when you create more depth.

It helps if you have an overall game plan and a tool that helps you see your entire training focus. One of the tools I used recently in a management consulting engagement is the IT Training Plan below.

IT Training Plan

Using a template like this is simple and it highlights exactly what you want to see:

Training you need to prioritize
Who needs to receive the training

Quick steps:

List the training you want to focus on in the first column.
Highlight the high priority training classes.
List your employees across the top row.
For each class, identify those who have functional knowledge by shading the appropriate cell green.
For each class, identify each employee you want to target training for by shading the appropriate cell red.

It’s that simple, , , now you can easily see what will be trained and who will receive the training. The final step would be to determine who should develop and deliver training for each class, , , and then target the training dates.

One recommendation is that when you actually deliver the training classes, you should consider recording the class so it can be used again for other employees in the future. Take a look at the post Create a training studio for your company to learn how to develop a training studio quickly and inexpensively.

Invest in your people by providing a focused training curriculum that hits every employee in your organization, , , it pays real dividends.

CLICK HERE to download the customizable IT Training Plan template