Investing in your staff
Posted in Web strategy on: Thursday, February 23, 2006 by Paul Boag
Unsurprisingly my last post generated a huge amount of feedback. By far the majority focused on the learning curve involved in adopting web standards. Many complained they simply didn’t have the time to “get up to speed”. The follow is directed at those who employ web developers/designers…
The cost of training
All your developers need is a few hours each week to work on their own projects.
As an employer myself, I know that the word "training" can make your wallet scream in pain. If you are a small business, the thought of staff taking time out to get trained up can be scary. There is the cost of the training itself, the travelling expenses, the cost associated with adopting what has been learnt and the time away from paid projects. All in all, it is easier and safer to go with "on the job training" which equates to no training at all!
You may also finds the constant demands from web designers for training (or simply time to learn) rather unreasonable. After all, nobody else seems to require so much time to sit around doing nothing! In short, training can often be hard to justify.
A unique position
Although I can feel your pain, it is important to release what a unique position most web designers and developers are in. While many other professions have existed for hundreds of years, commercial web design is barely a decade old. The entire industry is evolving at a tremendous pace with both technology and methodology changing daily. I once heard it estimated that the average web designer has to relearn his skill-set every 18 months. Although I believe this is somewhat of an exaggeration it isn’t far off. With things moving so fast, having time to keep up with the latest developments is essential to your web site’s success.
For in-house designers too
You might think this is all well and good for a professional web design agency. After all, they need to be on the cutting edge of their industry. However, your company might just employee a couple of in-house designers to keep your own website in order. Surely, there is not as big a need for training in that situation? Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. There are no guarantees that your competition are not using an external web design house and so your internally produced website still has to compete with "cutting edge" design agencies. In addition, as I have said before, it is important that your site evolve with the rest marketplace otherwise, it will quickly appear out of date. Unfortunately, the web is very like the fashion industry. A nineties style website looks much like eighties style fashion… horribly dated! Users are constantly demanding more and more from websites and if your staff aren’t up to date with the latest developments they are going to struggle to deliver.
The good news
However, it’s not all doom, gloom, and expenses! Although there are a growing number of training courses available on various aspects of emerging web technology, they are not the only way to get your developers up to speed. The most cost effective thing you can do is allocate them time each week for "self learning". The web is crammed with valuable resources to help people learn about things like Unobtrusive JavaScript and web standards. All you need to do is set aside some time for them away from their normal workload. Admittedly, this has some productivity implications but these will be quickly outweighed by the productivity gains provided by these emerging methodologies.
All your developers need is a few hours each week to work on their own projects. Google has adopted this approach with incredible results. No travel expenses, no training courses, just a few hours a week. You can’t say fairer than that!
4 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
I agree with you entirely. Unfortunately the managers I work for don’t understand web standards, they don’t want to know about them, they don’t care about technology, and they don’t read this website.
However they have realised that our site has far better SE visibility, and that we’ve been able to roll out our new design on different servers and applications, which just wasn’t possible in the past. (I always tell them why we can now do this, so it might sink in one day)
And there’s always the accessibility aspect. Improved accessibility often doesn’t mean a huge amount to a manager, but there’s nothing like the threat of legal action against a company, for them to let you drop everything and take the time to learn how to use CSS properly. (An anonymous email to a CEO accusing them of having an inaccessible website and pointing out their legal obligations, could work. Although I’d never dream of suggesting this tactic.)
Without plugging Paul’s company (OK, I will), this is where an outside agency can help pull a company/institution into the modern age. With CSS experts creating the new site, internal staff could be allowed some time to learn the new skills which they will need to work with standards. Maybe agencies could suggest this to their new clients?
Paul,
I hope your web designers / developers are readers of your ramblings. Otherwise they will have missed out on a great chance for time some of their ‘own projects’ *smile*
Keep up the good work sir.
Sad but sometimes true Jonathan. To be honest this isnt just about web standards its about the web full stop. I think managers often fail to grasp that this is a fast moving industry and that staff need time to keep abreast of things.
I think there is a sad truth here that we are sometimes afraid to tell our managers.
Manager: “How long will it take you to learn CSS? Seven hours?”
You: “Nay, Seventy times Seven hours”.