What companies should pay attention to when training their IT employees
How can companies take care of the continuing education of IT employees?
Up-to-date know-how in web development has become significantly more important in recent years. Many companies underestimate the need for investment in training and further education of employees and thus miss important further developments. In the following, Mirko Eberlein uses the example of WebGate to show why and also how continuous learning can be approached in web development. Companies that solve internal shortcomings usually come out of crises stronger.
When companies neglect training, even employees who started at a company with excellent skills miss out on important developments. Without regular training, they don’t learn new features and language tools that could save companies a lot of time and money. The web basics HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, for example, are constantly evolving. JavaScript, for example, has been updated annually since 2015. Often, elaborately programmed bridges could be replaced with a leaner and less expensive alternative. Little knowledge of current possibilities prevents the optimal use of the basics and frameworks.
When companies neglect training, even employees who started at a company with excellent skills miss out on important developments.
Of course, companies cannot permanently train their employees on all topics. However, it is important that employees master the basics, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and are also up to date on innovations and further developments, and have expert knowledge of the frameworks used in the company. For employees who have solid basic knowledge, entry into specialization becomes much easier. With this division of the training budget into basic training AND specialization in selected frameworks, both employees and the company can benefit in the long term.
Every continuing education program starts with the basics – and this is also true for the “Cloud”.
The “cloud” continues to be a central foundation in web development. Cloud offers from various providers simplify work enormously, as many steps from development to deployment can be implemented so much more easily. Since the cloud providers are constantly developing and expanding the services they offer, the ongoing training of our employees at WebGate is central.
We have already standardized and optimized our customers’ work processes in several projects. In particular, by using cloud-based standard solutions, we have been able to save an extremely large amount of time during implementation, to the benefit of our customers. To improve usability in applications, for example, we use AI services. We have also been able to save a lot of time in delivering the application thanks to “Continuous Integration” and “Continuous Deployment” and with the help of the AWS offerings “Code Build” and “Cloud Formation” and make the release process even more secure.
Companies that rely on the cloud for web development should therefore also train their employees about the services of the respective cloud provider. For example, employees should know about the basics of the so-called “build” processes – i.e. how the various services build on each other and can be put together. Services range from simple AI services to creating complete “build” pipelines, provisioning servers or other resources, and creating “workspaces” for employees. Services from the cloud can be used for almost every area of IT.
Management tools such as Jira for leading project teams, Jenkins, Code Build for infrastructure, or DevOps for designing development processes are becoming increasingly important.
Like all companies, we have very diverse employees. Some even voluntarily continue their education in their “spare time”, others need active encouragement. So the “curious” ones act as ambassadors and pass on their knowledge in team sessions or on-the-job. If necessary, we also send our employees to external training courses to be introduced to topics that we ourselves do not yet know. Today, a large part of the certifications is offered online. This is a path that we also recommend to other companies, as employees can complete them flexibly, according to their workload. For us, as for many other companies, it is difficult to do without employees for one or more days in the daily business.
Besides, it is often not practical to teach the full knowledge of a framework, a cloud provider, or the basics in a short period of time. Not all employees learn the same way, and complex topics also need time to settle. Today, greater bandwidth and computing power are already opening up the possibility of delivering courses and exams entirely online. The current crisis also shows how quickly and easily familiar face-to-face and frontal teaching can be transformed into a digital form of learning. However, they cannot replace face-to-face teaching in the long term. Physical presence enables course participants to interact with experts in real-time so that questions can be answered promptly or experiences can be contributed. Universities and various training providers have already been using virtual classrooms for some time. But with Covid-19, even state elementary schools are now online within a very short time. Whether and how physical presence affects learning behavior and how important the real experience is for learning success remains to be investigated in the future.
Continuing education in web development is a must!
In summary: Continuing education in web development is a must! In the coming years, every continuing education course will continue to start with the basics and lead course by course to expert knowledge. The form of continuing education – on- or offline, intensive, or repetitive courses – should be determined based on the individual situation of the employees in line with that of the company.
Author: Mirko Eberlein
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