IT training

ITWeb, in partnership with Mecer Inter-Ed, ran a survey in June on the value of IT training and certification amongst businesses and individuals in South Africa.

The survey aims to explore whether businesses think that there´s value in paying a training services provider, and if so, what is that value, and does the market understand that value.

A total of 219 valid responses were captured, with 61% of respondents being at executive or middle management level. While 40% of respondents came from the IT sector, both government and financial services were also well represented.

Here are some of the key findings:

1. The majority of survey respondents (69%) were IT professionals who take or are interested in taking IT training. Almost a third (31%) of respondents were either a training manager, HR professional, or team lead responsible for planning, managing, or budgeting for IT staff training.
2. Of the pool of respondents that included training managers, HR professionals or team leads, almost half (43%) provide technical training for their IT staff continuously throughout the year, 31% provide it as needed, based on demand or projects, and 21% do it rarely or only when required.
3. Six percent of this pool of respondents said they did technical training on a regular schedule. 60% of them have a dedicated IT staff training budget. And asked how much their organisation allocates annually for IT training per employee, 24% said less than R8 000, 24% said between R8 000 and R15 000, 16% said R15 000 to R30 000, and 19% said more than R30 000.
4. The remainder of the survey was completed by IT professionals, ie the 69% who take or are interested in taking IT training. Almost all of the survey respondents (99%) said they found value in IT training and certification.
5. The top three vendor certifications held by survey respondents were Microsoft (46%), ITIL (27%) and CompTIA (25%).
6. The majority of survey respondents (76%) are interested in pursuing Microsoft vendor certifications in future, followed by AWS (55%) and Google (37%). Respondents were able to tick multiple options for this question.
7. Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence were selected by 73% of survey respondents as the topics they’d most like to train and certify on.
8. Most IT professionals prefer to receive IT training via self-paced online learning (32%) and instructor-led virtual training (30%), whereas 25% like instructor-led in person training and 13% said webinars or short courses (2 to 3 hours in duration).
9. Most of these respondents (65%) said their employer typically pays for their training and certification, while 32% say they self-fund it.
10. The main three factors that would influence their decision to enroll in a training program are cost (80%) followed by course content (60%) and duration (51%), with available dates coming in at 49%).
11. The three primary ways in which IT training has benefited respondents’ careers are: enhanced skills (48%), improved job performance (28%) and career advancement (21%).