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• Varied Skills the Key to Getting Ahead

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Nov-Dec 2008

• Six Ways to Negotiate with Other Cultures

• Gain Fast ROI from Virtualisation

• Communications Skills and Surfing Microsoft: A Trainer’s Perspective

Sept-Oct 2008

• A Different Approach to Project Management

• The Future of Software Development: A Developer’s Perspective

• Australian Organisations Set to Embrace UC with New Training Courses

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• DDLS at Tech.Ed: Meet the Presenters

• Is your organisation skilled to survive Australia’s economic downturn?

• A Step Closer to Business Process Management

Jun 2008

• Top Tips for Fear-Free Presenting

• How to Retain Your Employees

• Access to Data Makes your Business Smarter

May 2008

• Internet Protocol Volumes Explode: Manage your business’ risks

• Win the War Against Skills Shortage

• New General Manager at DDLS

April 2008

• Attend TrainIT for Charity for This Year’s Top Technology Insights

• Managing Employee-led Communication Tools at Work

• Top Tips for Project Managers to Improve Performance

March 2008

• Negotiation Skills

• SpecIT Student Q&A

Archived Issues

Varied Skills the Key to Getting Ahead

Welcome to the first DDLS Newsletter for 2009.

2008 was a great year for us at DDLS. All up, nearly 12,000 people walked into our technology, process and people classrooms. We also introduced 45 new courses to meet your emerging training needs.

Late last year, we surveyed you to get a greater understanding of your training needs in 2009. We received an overwhelming response, thanks to all those respondents who participated.

Out of your responses, there were main themes that emerged:

1. Getting ahead in your job

We asked you what the most important factors were in your decision to train with DDLS. An overwhelming 86 percent of respondents said they considered obtaining a specific skills set to perform better at their current job and get ahead as important.

This shows that in 2008 many organisations implemented new projects (through either insourcing current ones or commencing new ones) and therefore required better skills to manage those projects.

Despite changes to economic conditions over the last 12 months, I expect this to continue as organisations seek more ways to improve their processes and create efficiencies.

It also shows a commitment to career development as employers aim to increase the skills sets within their existing employees and use training as a retention strategy.

Interestingly, more than 75 percent of respondents trained with DDLS to gain a new stream of skills sets. This suggests that many people changed roles last year. This indicates a continuing push from organisations to use existing staff to implement projects or new technologies.

2. Variety is important

89 percent of respondents told us that being able to undertake technology, process and people courses with one training provider was important to them. This is interesting because it shows that new technologies are driving skills development in other areas.

For example, unified communications and virtualisation drove many projects last year. Having the necessary project management or business analysis skills was important to our customers to ensure these technologies contributed to overall organisational efficiencies.

In 2008, we also saw technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint become increasingly used across organisations, indicating that departments outside of IT benefit from training.

We’ll provide you with further feedback from our survey in the coming issues of this Newsletter and show you how we’ll use this feedback to set our focuses at DDLS in 2009.

We hope that 2009 brings you and your organisations success and we’re looking forward to continuing to partner with you in training this year and beyond.

Kind regards,

David Gage
General Manager, DDLS