By Linda Rosencrance
Copyright computerworld
Nhi Nguyen, founder and partner at business consultancy Agilify, sees this pattern repeatedly. “IT managers tend to just send everyone to different IT conferences. Sometimes the team isn’t a fit for a particular conference,” she said.
The problem starts with poor selection. IT managers often choose conferences based on hype rather than relevance to their teams’ actual needs and skill levels. Then they compound the mistake by providing zero follow-up or accountability.
Nguyen said her team takes a completely different approach. They carefully match conference selection to each employee’s set of skills and career track. When people return, there are clear expectations, such as presenting key takeaways in a lunch-and-learn session to share knowledge with the team or launching an internal project where they can use what they learned.
“Sometimes just watching it and doing it are two different things,” Nguyen noted. “We want some way to have some application of the work.”
How to make training work
To be successful, IT managers need to stop throwing training at the wall and hoping something sticks. Real upskilling means taking the time to understand what your business needs are and where your people want to go in their careers, then creating a plan that brings those two together.
The goal isn’t just better-trained employees. As Williams-Lindo explained, it’s about transforming “training from a cost center into a growth and retention engine, ensuring tech talent evolves alongside business needs.”
This means managers can’t just set up training and walk away. They need to stick around, ensure people can actually use what they’re learning in their real work, and face the fact that helping their teams keep up with new skills isn’t optional anymore — it’s how their companies stay in business.
The organizations that get this right aren’t just going to hang onto their top talent longer. They’re setting themselves up to win when AI takes over all the boring, repetitive work and human skills become incredibly valuable — as long as they’re the right skills, learned the right way.
More on upskilling:
How — and why — to upskill your employees
How to discover hidden tech talent in your organization
Balancing hard and soft skills: the key to high-performing IT teams
