Does Your Staff Have the Skills to Succeed? (continued)
In Search of the Right Skills
With technology expanding so rapidly, Domenick says it can be a real challenge to incorporate all the skills an organization needs on staff. One solution: powerful partnerships. FDU has formed collaborative relationships with other colleges and universities in New Jersey. If one institution doesn't have an employee with a particular skill, the IT group can borrow a person with the necessary talent and pay them as a consultant.
For Welch's Oracle implementation, Lemmerhirt didn't have the budget to bring in consultants skilled in Java, Perl and XML. His team chose Java as their coding language and focused on training certain staff members.
"We looked at whether anyone with the older skills could easily transition to object-oriented programming or Java and Perl,'' Lemmerhirt says. "We found some people who could pick up similar technologies," such as programmers who could transition from RPG to Java. Because Lemmerhirt knew that other staffers wouldn't learn the new skills as easily, he relied on the first wave to undergo the transition to mentor the others. This, he says, turned out to be a good strategy.
Any IT managers looking to get a handle on their staff's capabilities, whether in preparation for a specific project or just in general, should follow these three steps:
- Make an inventory of each employee's skills.
- Create a matrix that displays in-house skills -- and skills gaps -- at a glance.
- Solicit opinions from others on staff to make sure the matrix is adequate and accurate.
"Decide where you want to go,'' says Lemmerhirt. "Then work on a plan to get people there."
About the Author
Esther Shein is a freelance writer and editor specializing in technology and business. Her work has appeared in CFO, CIO, Corporate Dealmaker, Smart Enterprise and The Boston Globe. She is the former editor-in-chief of Datamation, an online technology magazine.
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