Technical Training - Why Your Company Wants to Pay for Yours.

Does asking your company to pay for a technical training outside of those offered by your learning department feels a bit like asking someone to cover the tab because you forgot your wallet? It shouldn’t. It is a well-supported fact that employees that get relevant training opportunities and feel like they can advance because of it are more likely to be happy and productive and are less likely to leave for greener pastures. Having you (the employee) stay up to date with current technology is key for a company’s long-term success and in their best interests.

Keeping employee skills current increases employee satisfaction and has excellent ROI for business. Click To Tweet

This should not be a surprise. Among the top reasons employees would consider a company as an attractive career opportunity, a survey by Towers_Watson listed education opportunities in the top five- above vacation and paid time off! Corporations rank employee education slightly lower, yet still in the top 10 ‘rewards’ they provide to attract and retain employees. Education directly leads into opportunities for employee career advancement, ranked in the top three by both employees and employers.

So it should be a given that everyone values continued education and in tech companies. Yet there is a disconnect. A statistic presented by the Linux Foundation states that 41% of corporate technical training budgets are not being spent! This means missed opportunities for both employees and employers to increase the quality – and contentedness- of their workforce! But why is this?

Many companies provide student learning as an employee benefit, yet many employees don't know this! Click To Tweet

Certainly a number of reasons for unspent learning budgets factor in – time constraints, scheduling conflicts, limits on travel budgets… Yet many of these reasons become increasingly irrelevant in a world of online, self-paced training opportunities. One factor that we have become increasingly aware of is that employees are simply unaware of the availability of free training or the specifics of how to access the specific training they need.

Now having read all this, you may be thinking – “That is great, but my company is too small – we don’t have a Learning and Development department” or “I don’t think we can do training outside our approved L&D vendors.” The only way to be sure is to ask – it may be that your supervisor, HR person/department or L&D lead about the specifics of your technical training opportunities. And remember, employee training is a win-win. Employees that receive training (and keep their skill set relevant) are more likely to remain with the company that invests in assuring they remain up to date.
Your company wants you to become more capable- to become a better, more valued employee. So don’t be shy, ask your L&D or HR person if they will pay for the training course you want to take – the answer may be a pleasant surprise!

John Starmer,
Director of Education

Increase your job satisfaction and your company’s ROI by taking Kumulus Tech OpenStack, Docker, Kubernetes or other cloud-relevant technical training. Learn more at https://kumul.us/educate!