It is crucial for the future of every business that IT training and re-training take place in companies wanting to compete in the e-commerce era, says Manchester-based David Snow, an executive director of NCC Education Services.
Snow, who co-authored "Learning to Succeed in Business with Information Technology" is in SA this week to urge CEOs who want their businesses to survive the Internet era, not to allow IT training to become an expendable budget item:
"Too often, IT training is just budgeting sport for financial managers," emphasises the 39-year-old who was "rescued" from a life revolving around rugby by the arrival of computer science on the school syllabus 25 years ago.
Snow is also visiting the education institutions NCC chose to run its IT training courses in SA. But his mission - and the message of the 12-chapter book he and two colleagues wrote in four months - overrides NCC`s need for student registrations.
IT training is "everyone`s lifeline to the future" maintains the man who wrote his first computer program as a 14-year-old schoolboy - and progressed to installing computer systems and training users for both the Botswana and Malawi governments.
"The reluctance to train, re-train or update staff, is understandable," Snow concedes. "But instead of allowing themselves to be poached by other companies, highly-trained and up-skilled IT people are tending to stay with the company that invested in their training.
"Once they are convinced of the company`s commitment to keeping them up-to-date, highly sought-after IT boffins move around less, " Snow points out.
"The research we did before the three of us divvied up the chapters according to our specific expertise was an eye-opener. Of the 10 related computer skills staff members at 5 000 global companies said they needed most, it was `basic computer skills` that topped the needs-chart.
"Not Internet. Not Unix. Just basic computer skills! It was a sobering result. So, even if CEOs only see to it that they and all their staff can touch-type, it will be a start," he contends. A change in attitude by CEOs towards loosening the company purse-strings for IT training has to be the next brave step, Snow insists:
"The global economy will benefit when there are more trained people in the pool. Does it matter, then, who spent how much on training people - and in which country - initially?"
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