Adapting employees’ skills and roles has become one of the main drivers of continuity and success in the new normal. With the unprecedented acceleration of digital transformation initiatives in modern organizations, leaders need to transform their teams’ capabilities to keep pace with emerging technologies and socio-economic changes.
While most large enterprises take the DIY route to upskill and reskill their existing IT staff, startups and small businesses generally lack the tools, resources, and expertise to carry out this endeavor successfully.
Here, IT consultancy firms can help businesses fill the skills gap and adopt the latest tools, technologies, and practices as per their industry’s and personnel’s requirements. Unfortunately, many smaller firms remain blissfully unaware of the benefits of outsourcing IT training to specialists.
Therefore, in this post, we’ll share why you should hire an IT consultancy firm to assess your skills gap and help upskill or reskill your existing IT team. However, before we dive into that, we’ll briefly talk about the importance of improving your IT team’s skills and technical competence in the new normal.
The Importance of IT Upskilling and Reskilling
1. Enhanced Productivity and Confidence
In the fast-paced business landscape, it’s ideal to work smarter rather than harder to maximize operational efficiency and productivity. By regularly upskilling and reskilling your IT staff, you can keep them in constant transition, so they feel more confident adopting and using new software and technologies.
Reskilling will also help you pick up new trends and adopt emerging industry standards. For example, as the internet grows more complex, IT teams are switching to new web development technologies, such as headless architectures and emerging coding languages (Rust, Swift, Python3, Ruby, Kotlin, etc.).
2. Fewer Tech Problems and Downtimes
As a modern organization, the last thing you want is to rely on a team of digital dinosaurs accustomed to conventional, obsolete technologies and outdated IT practices. With regular upskilling, you can ensure your IT staff understands how new IT processes and technologies work. Upskilling will ensure they can troubleshoot any issues in the infrastructure (hardware/software/cloud) and minimize downtime.
3. Enhanced Infrastructure Security
Every industry is becoming more technology-focused and software-reliant in the post-pandemic digital age. However, this puts them in a bit of a predicament. The more they digitalize their operations, the more security risk they take. Moreover, technologies become more advanced and sophisticated with time, and cybersecurity threats become advanced too.
Therefore, another important reason to upskill and reskill your existing IT staff is to ensure they’re well-versed with the latest Cybersecurity solutions and practices to close any security gaps and minimize/prevent IT downtimes and data loss. Regular training helps them adopt new security software, perform real-time security analysis, and automate incident response to shut down threats instantly.
Benefits of Hiring an IT Consultancy Firm for Upskilling and Reskilling Staff
Now that you understand the importance of IT upskilling and reskilling, you’re probably thinking of improving your team’s capabilities and devising a training plan. However, you can outsource this task to an IT consultancy firm and focus on your core business activities. Here are some key benefits you can reap by avoiding the DIY training route:
1. Unparalleled Expertise
Modern IT consultancy firms have a dedicated network of highly trained IT experts and certified consultants across several IT disciplines. Therefore, they offer unparalleled expertise compared to in-house IT teams or professionals in small firms with limited skills, experience, tools, and resources.
For instance, many traditional businesses adopting cloud technologies may have teams specializing in on-premises infrastructure but with limited knowledge of cloud migration or trending solutions.
2. Faster Transition
Many small businesses can’t find the breathing space to conduct IT upskilling and reskilling training programs either due to strict deadlines, project pileups, more in-foot traffic, or remote/hybrid work models. In many cases, they have to trade off some of their daily activities to fit training into their daily schedules.
These issues inevitably lead to unnecessary delays and prolongation, which can be costly and counterproductive. You can accelerate the transition and upskill/reskill your staff faster. They can equip you with specialists (L&D professionals) that work behind the scenes to design the IT training material and courses according to their routines and capabilities.
3. More Cost-Effective
Consultancy firms are often hired temporarily to guide organizations regarding the dos and don’ts in their quest to improve their teams’ capabilities. Many small businesses that usually opt for the DIY route often fail to achieve tangible results or do so at steeper costs. Consultants can help you find the most cost-effective route to success and equip you with the expertise and tools to get you there.
4. Comprehensive Advice
As your business and industry evolve substantially, your team may need to learn how to leverage emerging technologies and practices to improve productivity and performance. However, finding the right mix of solutions requires careful consideration, and not many small businesses have the expertise to help make strategic IT decisions.
IT consultancy firms are familiar with the latest trends in different industries. Therefore, they can help equip your business with the right tech solutions and train your team to use them effectively. Moreover, they can identify critical skill gaps and develop tailored training programs to help fill them.
Conclusion
So there you have it – four game-changing benefits of hiring an IT consultancy firm for upskilling and reskilling your IT staff. With the IT industry rapidly evolving since the pandemic, you need to invest in employee training programs to ensure your team is up to speed with the latest solutions and industry practices.
DTG Consulting Solutions, Inc., a specialized, industry-leading, and highly experienced staffing company, has been an authorized partner for several tech companies in the market, including Microsoft. Therefore, they can equip your business with the right mix of IT experts and L&D specialists to help improve your IT team’s capabilities.
Feel free to get in touch with us anytime for more details.