How to implement role-based training for your tech teams

There are many roles in Information Technology today that didn’t exist a few years ago. Roles like machine learning architect and artificial intelligence developer are in high demand today but there isn’t enough skilled tech talent to match the demand. The most cost-effective solution in this case is to upskill and cross-skill the existing employees.

Every IT organization has their own specific job roles. To upskill employees to fit into these roles would require training in their own specific tech stacks. Regular learning and development courses trains employees in stand-alone technologies. In order for them to have a holistic understanding of the role, the tech stacks need to be customised. Beyond that, a practical approach in training is necessary to see if the employees have been able to get a good grasp on the technologies. To make that happen, role-based training is the answer.

What is role-based training?

Role-based training involves understanding a specific job role and training the talent to acquire technical and other skills to perform that role well.

In a Gartner survey of over 400 global IT companies, 64% of IT executives said that talent availability is the largest challenge to emerging technology adoption. This has resulted in a sharp increase in demand for IT roles which has led to an increase in in-house training for employees in order to upskill and cross-skill them for different job roles. So, role-based training is more important than ever in today’s world. 

Implementing role-based training

To begin with, shortlist potential employees and administer skill assessments to identify gaps with respect to the job roles. Measure not just gaps but also proficiency levels of each employee. This is necessary as each employee will need a different role-based training as per their proficiency. After that build a learning path with the right mix of hands-on labs, assignments and assessments. For freshers, exposure to live projects will be beneficial. For lateral hires, it could be hackathons or coding/stack challenges.

The goal is to give the employees hands-on training that will help them handle the curveballs thrown in a real-life scenario. It is crucial to build the right curriculum for these trainings. This training should cover the skills in the right order and the content must work together to achieve the learning objectives.

There are various ways to conduct these trainings:

• Build an in-person bootcamp

• Use a blended approach to learning with mentor support

• Offer online training

Whichever mode it is, Techademy can help you set up tailor-made role-based training programs for your organization across multiple technologies and roles.

Discover how Techademy enhanced the learning outcomes and made deployment times easier with role based training for a global technology services and solutions provider here.