With the budget season approaching for many organizations and everyone under a pandemic alert of some sort, it is time to look at what is essential to invest in within your operation’s audit, risk or security department for next year. We know there are always non-negotiable activities and criteria for each budget year. Are you looking at the training and upskilling of your employees as one of these items?
Here’s why you should be strongly considering training teams at your organization from several different perspectives:
- Technically, the current pandemic has caused a vast array of organizations and companies to migrate to working remotely. This provides opportunities for adversaries and hackers to take advantage of less than optimal secure communications and configurations for these remote access events. Your technical staff needs to understand methods of attack, secure communications, and techniques for supporting the remote workers and their equipment appropriately. There are many training and security organizations that have developed training videos, educational seminars, online courses and other awareness and training components that are very affordable within an organization’s budget.
- Operationally, the online worker of today is looking for a user experience that is comparable to working from the office as well as is the business operations staff and management. We have had to adjust how our normal operations work and even re-define our business priorities and efforts in light of the work environment today. This has led to a wide range of collaborative tools and techniques being either introduced or expanded in the new remote workspace. Our workers need new skills in online communications, collaboration, exchanging information and data, as well as expanding soft skills around idea exchange, communications, managing work-from-home environments, and other areas. These skills can be enhanced via online skills seminars, conferences and training courses.
- Organizationally, every company has embarked on an effort to adjust and re-assess its own organization to determine the best workforce structure and organizational staffing requirements due to the current operating conditions. Some organizations have adjusted up in some areas and down in others. Other groups have completely re-designed their workforce for this new organizational norm. These conditions have led to personnel being reassigned, laid off, or otherwise interrupted in in their work activities. The organizations need to ensure their most critical staff are supporting business goals as best they can, so new process models, new ways to accomplish business objectives and new lines of gaining returns all require today’s businesses to upskill employees in order to achieve these new goals and requirements.
- Personnel-wise, nearly every worker today has experienced a significant change in their mode of performance, methods and techniques for reaching job objectives and managing work-life balance, often introducing new stress into their life. Facing the prospect of furloughs and even job terminations, workers increasingly need to get “up to speed” with new skills and training in order to maintain employment, let alone advance in their careers. Skills requirements are changing dynamically in today’s work world. Upskilling of employees to help keep high-performing workers within the company is in high demand and requires dedication and resources on the part of the organization. Fortunately, the online training and education community has responded rapidly to these demands, and the necessary training, skills development and education to this rapidly changing environment are widely available.
In light of the changing operating environment and continued remote work world, it is good practice to review and institute an essential requirement for companies and organizations to continuously keep their workers trained and aware of technical, operational and organizational needs, technologies, communications, and methods to accomplish all of these requirements. Once these various areas are reviewed, the corresponding budget needs to be addressed and allocated to ensure the organization’s efforts to strengthen their teams are prioritized appropriately in the context of reaching business goals and the overall standing of the company. These multitude of requirements can and are currently being accomplished through enterprise training, online skills advancement efforts, remote seminars and conferences, and other virtual workforce development opportunities available today. Although budgets are tight for many organizations in this pandemic year, organizations cannot afford to leave their workforces behind in a time of shifting expectations and new skills that are urgently needed.