In case our DAPP announcement wasn’t enough, we’ve also got great news on our Training Provider Network.
Launching this week with 17 founding partners, the National Skills Academy for IT can offer IT professionals additional access to learning resources.
Online learning offers the opportunity for study anywhere, at any time, at a pace to suit the student.
Support from universities, colleges, and private providers adds other flavours of learning, helping IT professionals to access a programme of study they feel most comfortable with.
Our network undergoes the scrutiny of our Training Quality Panel, comprising of major IT employers, to ensure IT professionals will benefit from excellent teaching.
Yesterday, renowned figures from the business and IT sector recognised and celebrated the UK’s most talented women working within the technology sector at the Cisco everywoman in Technology Awards in London.
The winners were chosen by a panel of judges from the industry for having demonstrated excellence within their field and having acted as role models to future generations.
Commenting on the Cisco everywoman in Technology Awards, Maxine Benson MBE, co-founder of everywoman said:
“The amazing women taking home awards today really highlight the diversity of opportunities that are available in the IT sector – whether within corporate organisations, charities or through setting up their own tech start-ups.”
“As many women are re-evaluating their career choices, today’s inspirational winners show that anything is possible and that technology is an industry that embraces its female talent.”
“We congratulate them on their achievements, and hope their success will encourage others into the sector.”
I’d add my congratulations without qualification, were it not for a comment on a popular social networking and microblogging site which suggested that having technology awards just for women to patronise women.
Personally, I do not feel able to comment with much authority - I’m not a woman and I cannot be described as an IT/technology professional (although the Guardian did once very sweetly describe me as an “IT expert”) - but it doesn’t feel as though it can be interpreted as patronising to me.
The facts of the matter are these:
Women make up just 17% of the UK’s IT and telecoms professional workforce.
The number of girls taking A-level computing is a pitiful 9%.
The number of female applicants to computing related degrees is just 15% (with e-skills’ ITMB degree bucking the trend, with a third of all applicants being female).
I guess the question is why?
Research from e-skills UK shows that girls just don’t consider IT as a viable career choice. Girls as young as 8 are rejecting IT as being a “boy-topic”, as being dull and being geeky.
Does it really matter that the girls aren’t interested in IT as a career? From an individual (male?) point of view, a smaller recruitment pool in a rapidly growing sector is no bad thing for job seekers. And isn’t it better to have a talent pool full of people with a genuine interest and enthusiasm for their subject?
But from an organisational point of view, it means the industry is missing out on 50% of the UK talent pool.
While, as I explained above, I may not be the best person to express strong opinions about this matter, I think yes, it does matter.
For a start, e-skills research shows that people (not just girls) are put off considering careers IT because of negative perceptions and misconceptions about what working in IT really involves. If you have the time and inclination to watch a fairly silly, but very entertaining and effective, video about careers in IT I encourage you to so.
Another barrier to young women thinking about embarking on a career in technology is who do they have as role models? Did you know that five of the 10 top-paid CIOs at Fortune 500 companies are women? I only found out because it’s my job to find these things out, and I’d struggle to name a single one of them without looking it up. We know Bill Gates, we knew Steve Jobs, we know Mark Zuckerberg - these aren’t just names people throw into blog posts to add credibility - these are household names.
Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg are not. Yet.
So, are the everywoman Technology Awards patronising to women? Or are they an invaluable and commendable way to shine a light on the women excelling in IT and demonstrate to others the breadth and variety the sector offers.
The winners in the 2012 Cisco everywoman in Technology Awards are:
Woman of the Year – Sponsored by Cisco Systems Ltd
Vin Murria, Chief Executive Officer, Advanced Computer Software Group plc
Rising Star of the Year – Sponsored by BP
Laura Earle, Executive Communications Manager, Services, EMEAR, Cisco
Team Leader of the Year in an SME (with under 500 employees) - Sponsored by BCS
Kirstin Duffield, CEO, Morning Data Limited
Leader of the Year in a corporate organisation (with over 500 employees) – Sponsored by Alexander Mann Solutions
Sheila Flavell, Chief Operating Officer, FDM Group
Innovator of the Year – Sponsored by womenintechnology.co.uk
Mandy Chessell, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor, Chief Architect for InfoSphere Solutions, IBM
Entrepreneur of the Year – Sponsored by Orga Systems
Olga Kubassova, Founder and CEO, Image Analysis Ltd
Inspiration of the Year – Sponsored by eBay
Gillian Arnold, Director, Tectre
Employees inevitably account for the biggest chunk of many organisations’ budgets. They are also any organisation’s greatest asset.
The benefits of offering staff training and creating an environment which encourages self-development are well documented: better skilled employees have better morale, and people valued and cared for are more productive, more committed, and are more likely to stay.
Yet training budgets, and the “use it or lose it” attitude often applied to them, remain a soft target. Only the most naive employer will fail to recognise the importance of having a well trained workforce, but the return on investment is rarely seen in the short-term. When immediate savings are what you’re looking for, it is difficult to defend the associated expense.
The National Skills Academy for IT has, since Day 1, been determined to make training as easy and accessible as it is relevant and up-to-date. That it’s value-for-money is so obvious it’s irrelevant.
Because the Academy charges an annual subscription fee which gives your employees access to over 1000 courses, investing in group subscriptions means your employees’ training is free at the point-of-use.
The unique thing about subscribing to the National Skills Academy for IT, though, is that by doing so you are emancipating your employees, giving them control over their own destiny, ownership of their own skills and development.
You’re also making it easy for them. Whether, as is much discussed, attention spans are getting shorter or not, we are now used to consuming information, learning, data in much smaller chunks.
e-learning has come a long way and the resources offered by the National Skills Academy for IT are designed to suit modern patterns of work and modern learning styles. Learners can choose what, when and how much they study and can fit it around their day-to-day tasks. Not only that but you can access it quickly, easily and as you need it.
The kind of people who are going to take advantage of this opportunity are surely those exact same ones you want to keep: the ambitious, the self-starters, the organised and in-tune, the people who know the value they can add to you, their employer, by being better trained, better skilled.
A business is only as good as its employees. Hiring the best people you can is just the start of it. Especially in an industry which moves as quickly and as dramatically as technology, ensuring your people stay up to date, engaged and motivated is the only way your business will do the same.
Welsh computer consultant Nat Morris put his IT skills to work, and developed an ingenious system that lets him feed his pet friend Toby with a single tweet. To make sure there’s always some dog biscuits in the bowl, all he has to do is to send a message to @feedtoby for the food to be automatically released.
First time I heard the term Consumerisation of IT I thought, “Oh no, someone found me out!”
You see; new to my technician post I was greeted by the folks who never got on with the last guy, and who saw an opportunity to get their ideas aired and their most trivial of problems fixed.
Suggestions came as blunt as, “We need guest wifi in reception”, or as subtle hints like, “I’ve always said - we should try building our own staff intranet”.
So what was my crime? I would quickly cobble something small together with consumer tech to silence friendly advice with, “Done that, try it out!”
Here’s my confession - I never wrote the business case. I just built a rough prototype with cheap and nasty consumer products, waited a week or so to gauge the usage, then either abandoned it or switched it out for something a tad more robust.
“It’s a horrible thing to say, but there’s just not enough time [in college to learn] all the skills that people need to be successful. We are expecting more and more, and universities are supplying more, but we’re asking for still more”
So says Greg Taffet, CIO of U.S. Gas & Electric in North Miami Beach, in a recent article in ComputerWorld which has identified the 6 key skills employers find IT grads to be lacking.
Knowledge of business basics
Experience with systems integration
Emerging technologies expertise - business intelligence and cloud computing are named examples
The tech basics - such as command prompt, batch scripts, and Googling for answers
For an industry which employs 1.5 million people across virtually every sector of the UK economy, it’s perhaps surprising that employers are still struggling to find graduates with the skills they really need.
It was for this reason that e-skills UK’s IT Management for Business (ITMB) degree was developed. It’s a sector-supported honours degree programme developed in response to demand from employers for IT grads with a solid grasp of technology and the business-related and interpersonal skills to work effectively in project teams and client-facing roles.
How important are the so-called “softer” skills to your organisation - tell us what you think…
