Growth and Development: The Difference Between Losing and Maintaining Talent

Episode 32 November 16, 2021 00:36:51
Growth and Development: The Difference Between Losing and Maintaining Talent
The Edge: A Skillsoft Podcast
Growth and Development: The Difference Between Losing and Maintaining Talent

Nov 16 2021 | 00:36:51

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Hosted By

Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek

Show Notes

Technology is modernizing and evolving faster than we have ever seen before. As a result, IT professionals and companies are scrambling to play catch up in an industry that’s growing and changing every single dayHost Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek sits down with Michael Yoo, Customer Market Leader for Skillsoft’s Technology and Developer Portfolio, and Angie Okamoto, Vice President of Product for Global Knowledge to discuss key findings from Skillsoft’s Global Knowledge 2021 IT Skills and Salary Report, uncovering what organizations can do to overcome IT skills gaps. The short answer? Companies must invest in the growth and development of their IT talent in order to keep up.  

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Episode Transcript

Michelle BB 00:00:07 The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Skillsoft. Welcome to the edge. It is great to have you all back. You know, this, this is a podcast for learners and leaders alike, and together we engage in candid thought provoking conversations on the topic of learning and growth in the workplace. So welcome back now, on today's episode, we're going to be talking all things tech and it, and in case you haven't heard, we just released Skillsoft's global knowledge, 2021, I T skills and salary report. Now this past June, we completed our acquisition of global knowledge, a world leader in technology skills training. And along with pluma our digital coaching platform, we are better equipped to help organizations unleash the full potential of their most valuable asset. There are people and we can even better fulfill our vision for Skillsoft, which is to be the most highly valued provider of learning solutions. Michelle BB 00:01:06 Preparing the workforce of today with the skills for tomorrow, and a huge component of building a future fit workforce involves tech skills and delivering the critical training technology professionals need to enhance existing skills or to up-skill in order to stay current. Now, look, that's not easy to do in a field where the rate and pace of change is unabated to the point that frankly, just keeping up is quite challenging. Now this is the 15th annual global knowledge it skills and salary report, and we have packed it with valuable information on the state of the it industry, making it useful to tech practitioners themselves, along with the CIO, the CTO, HR leaders, and even the chief executive officer. This comprehensive report is one of the largest worldwide studies covering critical tech topics through a global lens. So what can you expect? Well, in the report, we share current salary information for it professionals across today's hottest roles, the most popular certifications, individual, and organizational benefits of those certifications. Michelle BB 00:02:20 Some of the top challenges that it decision makers are facing, particularly as digital transformation continues to accelerate the top, most preferred learning methods for tech development. Now, I want you to think hands-on, I want you to think multimodal and the top trends in it and tech over the past year with so many important findings in this year's report today, we're going to use our time to hone in on just one piece, addressing the skills gap. According to IDC by 2022 monetary losses from the it skills gap will reach $775 billion worldwide. Now that's up more than a hundred percent from 302 billion in 2019 pre pandemic. And it's only expected to continue to increase by 2025 IDC predicts that the financial impact will grow to 6.5 trillion with a T worldwide. Now these numbers account for things like delayed releases of products and services missed revenue targets and increased cost of doing business. Michelle BB 00:03:29 So the message is abundantly clear training and upskilling in the tech field is critical, but decision-makers are not the only ones striving to upskill their tech workforce. It professionals themselves crave training for their own personal growth. The skills and salary report found that for the third consecutive year, the top reason it professionals changed their employer was opportunity for growth and development far surpassing increases in compensation. Oh, and that was also the top reason for the second straight year in a row that it professionals changed their job role. So let me say this just one more time opportunity for growth and development, not compensation was the key determinant for keeping or losing talent. Okay. So what does this tell us upskilling, particularly in technology, it's a win-win for everyone decision-makers staff members, organizations alike. And so that's why we're here today. We're going to dive deeper into this topic. Michelle BB 00:04:30 I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with our very own Michael you customer market leader for Skillsoft's technology and developer portfolio. Michael is an experienced tech and business services executive with more than a decades worth of experience driving double digit growth for organizations. Now he has his doctorate from MIT and actually began his career as a physicist leading research and development efforts before transitioning to business strategy and leadership roles. Now that's something we might have to dive into on an entirely separate episode of the edge. Michael has held transformative leadership roles at Gartner GLG and served numerous high-tech clients while at McKinsey. And in his role here at Skillsoft, Michael focuses on understanding the need for organizations to support continuous upskilling of their tech workforce and to providing the best technology solutions to our customers, both the tech decision makers at enterprise organizations and the it practitioners they lead. Michelle BB 00:05:30 In addition to my conversation with Michael, I also had the chance to speak with Angie Okamoto, the vice president of product for global knowledge here at Skillsoft. Angie first began her career as an authorized trainer teaching courses, developing courseware and delivering training in a very specialized area of software. She then transitioned to working on the product side most recently serving as the product director for a software company before joining global knowledge and as vice president of product here at Skillsoft, Angie draws upon her firsthand experience as a trainer and takes a holistic view of the entire suite of it learning and development products to ensure that what we provide to our customers is not only comprehensive, but also highly effective. And so with that, let's jump in to today's mission, critical conversation. Michael, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on the edge. This is your first time here. Michael 00:06:26 Yeah. Thanks Michelle. Yeah, I'm excited for my a debut episode on the edge. Michelle BB 00:06:31 Well, it is an absolute pleasure to have you join me today. Now, before we jump in the conversation, there's a lot we're going to cover. Um, and I'm so eager to get to it. I think we have to tell our listeners a little bit more about you. I shared some about you and my introduction, but I'd love to give you a chance to share more about who you are, what brought you to Skillsoft and really what motivates you every morning to get up and do this job? Michael 00:06:54 Uh, yeah, no happy to do it. Uh, for me, it's all about teaching. Uh, I think you mentioned I started my career as a scientist and I thought I was going to be a physics professor and I thought I'd be basically training undergrads and grad students in how to do fundamental physics research in a lab. But after 15 years of being a professional scientist, uh, I made a mid-career switch and I moved into the business world. But as I made that switch, I brought two great loves with me, a love of science and technology and a love of teaching. And so when the opportunity arose to combine both of those passions in my current role at Skillsoft, I jumped at the chance. Michelle BB 00:07:36 I love that now. Um, you know, and I don't think that everybody, I was telling everybody before. I think that there's probably a whole conversation that we're going to have about your prior career as a physicist. But I think we have to jump in right now and level set for our listeners who may not be familiar with, or haven't had the chance to read this year's report. Now the it skills in salary report has been conducted annually. I said this before for the past 15 years, and we've been tracking trends in it over the course of all of those years. And in partnership with some of the leading technology companies, our yearly survey is distributed to millions of technology professionals around the globe. And this year's report yielded more than 9,000 responses from it, decision makers and staff across north America, Asia, Pacific EMEA and Latin America. Michelle BB 00:08:27 But this comprehensive report would not be possible without the help of our partners. So I'm going to give a big shout out and thank you to AWS Citrix, Cisco comp, Tia, Google cloud. I socket Microsoft Nutanix and Palo Alto networks along with additional support from IBM and red hat for helping make Skillsoft's global knowledge. It skills and salary report. One of the largest worldwide studies covering critical topics in the tech landscape. I'd also be remiss if I did not extend a tremendous thank you to our incredible skill soft and global knowledge team members who have been on the ground, driving this report from concept to completion. So now that we have that background and before we're able to dive into our conversation on some of the discoveries in this report, I think Michael, we need to first take a moment to discuss the current state of the skills gap, because whether you're an it professional or you're a tech leader in order to understand how to effectively address the gap, you got to look at what you're facing first. And this skills gap is something that we at Skillsoft talk about regularly. As we ask ourselves, how can we support our customers better as they seek to overcome these gaps within their organizations? So, Michael, I'd love to share some of the startling findings on the state of the it skills gap that we pulled together from this year or for this year's report. And also understand what you've been hearing from our customers as they've sought to address this really big challenge within their organizations this past year. Michael 00:10:02 Yeah. It skill gaps are the number one topic conversation I have with clients ever since I joined Skillsoft a couple of years ago. And not surprisingly because this year's report found that in 2021, nearly three out of four IDs decision makers, globally reported gaps in their skills among their it staff and that trend it's accelerating. I think it's becoming even more pervasive. So the survey says that that's a 40% increase from 2015 in the number of ITC decision-makers who report a skills gap in their it department, but they think what's even more important besides the number of, uh, organizations that are pointing skills gap is in the nature of the skillset itself. They're increasingly mission critical unlike five or 10 years ago, when I, two organizations mostly were concerned about acquiring skills, sort of at the bleeding edge of emerging technologies today, the skill gaps hit the core responsibilities of a technology organization. Michael 00:11:03 Some companies are worried about their workforces cloud capabilities or their cybersecurity skills, particularly in the past year, others are looking to expand data literacy or the use of artificial intelligence or machine learning. And nearly everybody is looking to transform their software development approach as well as improving the programming skills of their software developers. So it's the heart of what it does. And because of that, the risks associated with gaps in these mission, critical skills can be really devastating for a company over half of the companies we surveyed reported that their existing employees are undergoing increased stress in the technology organization. They're being asked to do more with less. And one in three of those companies also report resulting operational challenges that come from these gaps, whether that's diminished product quality or increased project duration, or just in general decrease ability to meet the business objectives. Michael 00:12:03 And then not surprisingly these overstretch, it organizations report 20% or more changes in key things about their performance, lower innovation rates delays in new hardware and software updates and increases in operational and talent acquisition costs. Now all of those are sort of, they are smaller elements that you see operationally. It really, uh, ties to the stat you cited earlier, cause it paints how much the skills gap affects the bottom line. IDC reports, you know, almost, you know, 800 million billion dollars, like almost a trillion dollars of monetary losses due to these IQ skill gaps in 2022. And most of that's probably lost revenue and not just increased costs. So it's mission critical right now for our clients and organizations in general, to address this address, this growing and very real skills gap. But one of the things our survey found is formal training. Isn't available to everybody. I was kind of astounded that a third of it. Decision-makers 37% reported that their organizations don't provide their employees of formal training, keep their technology skills up to date kind of shocking. Michelle BB 00:13:18 That's so interesting, Michael, because like then I guess the follow-up question is, is that the cons of the skills gap that organizations aren't providing employees with the training they need or is there another cause how do companies address my, my sense is there's not really a very simple answer to this question that it's no one single thing, right? Michael 00:13:40 I'm with you. I don't think it's a single thing, but I think instead it's the confluence of a whole bunch of challenges that all kind of build upon one another. And we see it from what decision makers are telling us in this year's report. The number one reason that they site is that the pace of technology change keeps on accelerating, right? That that's sort of the, the base behind everything we're seeing, what's left unsaid in the report. But what I hear directly from customers is that it's not just the pace, but the fact that technology transformation is increasingly central to a company's business. And that's true in virtually every industry around the globe in a way that wasn't say true five or 10 years ago. And so start with that and then add to the fact that companies can't hire their way out of the problem. Michael 00:14:30 Third, their sponsor noted. They don't have the budget to attract the qualified candidates to fill their skills gap. And one in four reported that even when they find the candidates, they can't afford to pay them what they want. So take those two things. And now add this, add the fact that a lot of companies struggle to figure out how to train upskill their workforce, particularly because the rate of change that they're trying to address is faster than the pace of their development programs, which means, you know, it's hard to catch up if you know, it's hard to be caught up if you are always playing catch up. And then one last thing to the file, right? Um, most this year makers, they're trying to prevent preemptively address these skill gaps, but there's actually a minority, but it's size minority like 10 or 11% of companies that don't actually have an active plan in place to combat these gaps. So, you know, these things aren't going to go in their own. And if they're left on, they're just going to get bigger and bigger. And at the heart of it, it's technology just, isn't the domain of the it organization anymore. It's central to the entire company. And so the company has to move budgets and organizations need to be marshaled to address and give priority to these skill gaps. Otherwise they won't be able to stay current and competitive. Michelle BB 00:15:49 You know, I've, I've said this numerous times, every company as a technology company and every department within every company, um, is utilizing technology in different ways. And so, so what we're hiring even outside of a traditional it department is so vastly different than we were doing five years ago. Um, we're not painting the brightest picture, but I don't think, look, I don't think it's all grim. I think there's something we can do about this. And we've seen it with our own customers. And even within this year's report that when you make the investment in training and certification, you now have this powerful tool to combat the skills gap and the fallout, right? This, this amazing number you cited. So I think the question is what can be done? What is being done? And as our commons, uh, our conversation is, has demonstrated the answer comes back to training, who you have training your existing talent because as managers are reporting, they cannot hire the skill talent they need. Michelle BB 00:16:48 They have the opportunity to focus their development on their current teams. And this leads me back to the finding that I stated back in my introduction, which is that employees themselves crave opportunity for growth and development. And if organizations fail to provide those growth opportunities, they may see their existing talent, uh, talent make that decision to either change their job role or even change their employer. So Michael, if, if training and upskilling our current or our existing team members is critical to both addressing the skills gap and maintaining talent. I'd love to talk more about the benefits of upskilling talent internally, right? Both from a business and employee wellbeing standpoint. What do you think there? Michael 00:17:35 We spent a lot of times up to now talking about the business benefit, right? Why, why these skill gaps impact the, not just the entire regime, but the entire company and why it's such a big drain on budget to actually try to attract and hire new talent rather than upskill internally. But I think in the heart of your question is what is it beside the cost savings? Well, making the commitment to upskill your current team is I think a real investment in your people. It shows you're willing to do so. And it, you know, you should expect to see a large impact on productivity and morale, right? Why, because we know that as you said, that it professionals want to up-skill this year's report three quarters of the respondents specifically said they're looking to improve their skillset. And often that gets expressed in terms of, in the technology space about acquiring key technology certifications and to be asked why, what they told us was they're more effective after they get their certifications, because the quality of their work improved because they're morning gage, because they're actually more efficient at doing their jobs, you know, and, and a bunch of them also received a raise or promotion as a result of the new skills and responses game. Michael 00:18:47 And on the flip side, the decision-makers we talked to overwhelming said that the investment in these kinds of certifications for their employees is a great investment, because what they notice is that those that have, have the certifications, the new skills as compared to their non-certified colleagues, those are the ones who are driving the productivity, that they need to meet their goals and beat the competition. Now you asked about best practice. We've seen a few best practices from our clients that we think all organizations can take to try to close the skill gap. First and foremost, have to identify what's blocking your organization or your team from accomplishing its goals. And then based upon those start to prioritize professional development so that the employees that you need can build the skills to work harder, sorry, work smarter rather than harder. And within that, at least particularly in technology, it turns out that having practice opportunities, that build sort of durable real-world skills, whether it's a hands-on lab or different challenge scenarios, or in scarier space, cyber ranges, those things help build skills that last, and then you have to modify the way that you think about delivering the learning based upon what skills they are, how critical they are and where they are in your organization. Michael 00:20:12 And in technology, you know, certification tracks turned out to be a very useful way to coordinate and organize the skills as well as the learning paths you need for the employees that are, that you're looking at. Michelle BB 00:20:25 I'm so glad you brought up certification, Michael, because as we focus on the tech industry and it professionals in particular, I think it raises the challenge that so much falls to employers to keep their teams up to date with the latest skills and for many functions within it. We know that the rapid transformation and modernization within the space can really mean that a relevant degree or even past experience may not meet the needs. Everything is moving so quickly. And so it professionals, they have to constantly remain current, whether that's to ongoing learning and development, building the skills and knowledge, they need to successfully meet the needs of their roles now, but also in the future. So I really love to hear your perspective on the importance of certifications for it professionals. And also, you know, tell us a little bit about what, where are, or what are the top certifications for 2021? Michael 00:21:20 Michelle, let's start by recognizing the real objective is, is to develop new skills and capabilities right in the technology space. It's not to go trophy hunting and amass, oh, we've got the big pile of certifications, but that's it certifications in the technology space are a super useful tool for corroborating, whether your IQ organization has the right skill set. So they allow you to be certain that the expertise you have is current because most certification holders have to re up their certification every two to three years. And we know that the underlying technology is changing at that time pace. When you talk to, um, technology professionals and the technology in our survey, the vast overwhelming number of them actually hold certifications over 90%, hold at least one certification. And that fractions increasing it's up 5% over last year and almost 10% over two years ago. And I can't say repeat this often enough that the training particularly comes certifications paid off almost half of the decision makers believe that certification help indicate whether or not they are closing their organizational skills gap. Michael 00:22:29 So again, great tools and super useful, right? But it's the skills underlying that matters. That's it? What certifications organizations focusing on for the second consecutive year this year, cybersecurity certifications were the most popular globally. They were followed closely by cloud and networking certifications from the largest technology providers in the world, by just like Microsoft and AWS and Google and Cisco and VMware to just name a few. There are some key project and IQ management certifications in agile or scrum or ITIL or prince two that remain perennial favorites year after year after year. And the survey also says that when you talk to I professionals, this list of what are the most important certifications, he's likely to be pretty much the same in 2022, because we've asked them what they want to focus on going forward. And it's much the same list now, as for listeners that we might have that are kind of wondering, Hey, which certification is the right one for them? Which one should they pursue next? I encourage them to read the full text of the report because in it, there's a ton of research that we won't have time to get into that share which credentials are associated with, which key it rolls. And from a personal point of view, which ones are the highest salaries, both worldwide as well as in specific geographies around the world. Michelle BB 00:23:57 So, you know, this is great. Thank you so much. And yes, everybody should be out there reading the report. Cause there's so much that we're not going to cover here, but we've talked about the skills gap we talked about. What's causing it. We talked about the impact, right? The monetary impact. And we talked about why upskilling is a great way to help organizations overcome the skills gap. But what we really haven't talked about is the training itself, right? Because what we really need to do, or what organizations need to do is build upon or implement a culture of continuous learning. And you talked about this before, but, but in various ways as well, because we know that didactic, this didactic style of learning isn't for everyone, particularly in this space. So you've got hands-on multimodal. So, so how in this, in this day and age, when skills are changing, when we've got to reappear certifications, when we want to learn new things, when we, when we need to put people, take people off the bench and put them somewhere else, how do we implement this culture of continuous learning that allows us to do that? Michael 00:25:03 It's a great question. In today's lightning, fast ITU world, we see training that takes place everywhere, whether it's formal instructor, led training formats, or it's more informal peer to peer more unstructured situations. But this reports is there's a real preference for one versus the other, nearly two thirds of the professionals. We interviewed preferred a more structured approach to skills development, as opposed to the more informal. And that's a preference that's remained consistent over the past several years. But the form that that structure changing takes does in fact, vary across our survey respondents and has varied a little bit, particularly the last couple of years, over the last 12 months, the overwhelming majority of professionals, like three quarters of them have participated in web-based online on demand training sessions that sort of e-learning format. The second most popular learning method was from a live instructor like in an online format. Michael 00:26:06 So a virtual classroom or a virtual instructor led training and in the past 12 months, and this is probably not surprising given the pandemic that we're living through the least utilized format is in-person instructor led physical classrooms because most organizations basically forced to turn to more virtual training options. Now, no matter which one of these three options they chose, whether it was on demand, whether it was a virtual instructor, led training or an in-person classroom instructor led training, we know that tech professionals learn best when they've got a whole multitude of learning assets to choose from not just educated didactic training, but also hands-on practice labs. Also certification test prep, also live mentoring, also books that all serve to reinforce and enrich the entire upskilling experience for it. And that's what delivers real lasting. Now it's super encouraging to see that so many it professionals have been able to take advantage of training to improve their skills, particularly in online fashion during the pandemic. Michael 00:27:15 But the survey also showed that there still many barriers that organizations and staff face to accessing the training. They so desperately need. The biggest one is not too surprising. It's that is workload nearly half the respondents say that while they want to train, they don't have time to actually train and get their day-to-day job done. There's also though a surprising number of folks, nearly 10% that said management, didn't see a tangible benefit to training. And another 10% that said their training requests weren't approved. Now look, it, all of that tells me there's still a lot to work to do to help organizations build the right learning culture for their workforces. That's around the tools they need. And we know, and we've talked at length today about how critical to the bottom line that is for, for our companies. Angie 00:28:05 There's just so much valuable information and insight in that report that sometimes it's not always, um, something we want to hear or read, but it's always insightful. Michelle BB 00:28:15 Angie Okamoto and the vice president of product for global knowledge here at Skillsoft. I also had the chance to speak with Angie and hear her key takeaways from the 2021. It skills and salary report. Angie 00:28:26 It's hard to believe that 76% of our it decision makers that responded are reporting gaps in their it workforce skills. It just is astounding. How can it possibly be so high? Um, but the risks associated with that gap can be devastating. I mean, the reduced productivity, the lost revenue of people's, uh, depleted mental health. There's just so many things that can feed into that when we allow it to grow, the rate of technology change is continuing to outpace the skills development programs. And so the gap just keeps getting bigger and wider. And so it's hard to be current or on the cutting edge of technology. If you're always playing catch up certification really helps with a lot of these things. And then it closes those organizational skill gaps. It meets some requirements for the customers and the clients, it boosts productivity, and it gives people an overall edge. Angie 00:29:23 Um, so certification is really one of the things that I think we can assist in help closing that gap because there's so much cost savings for organizations when they upskill internally. Um, one of my passions is, is really around retention, right? Uh, keeping employees engaged is far more valuable and cost effective than having to start from scratch. So there's some research by SHRM that suggests that replacement costs can be as high as 50 to 60% with the overall costs ranging anywhere from 90 to 200%, because not only are you forced to dedicate time and resources to recruiting and onboarding and training those new hires, your business simultaneously takes a hit because the role remains unfilled. And you've got a decline in your projects and the speed to completion of other things. So aside from those cost savings, um, I think the most powerful statement in this survey is that our, it professionals want to up-skill. Angie 00:30:25 They want that training and they're just not always given the opportunities to complete it. You know, certification is one of those things that it gives a Sheeran's right to both the employee, that their expertise is current, but also to their employer, that they're staying current with the technology and efficient in their roles. And that getting those certifications, which are available from major players, industry leaders in hardware or services or other categories, right. Show that skillset and that value in their space. So organizations really need to keep those qualified people working in those areas. And it's never been more critical in technology than it is today as technology permeates into all the areas of our business. By that, I mean, even the people who didn't intend to get into technology are involved in projects around technology and that change. And so understanding the concepts and keeping up to speed with that pace of change is imperative. Um, one other comment, I guess I'd like to make is that certification and earning those certifications can be a step in your career that just helps move you along. So many of us take a winding path to end up to where we are and that certification can help you bridge a gap that you want to make. And I guess my final takeaway from this would be pleased, invest in the people. Technology is critical, but the business should be a little less focused on what tech can do and more what tech enables people to do. Michelle BB 00:31:59 Let's get back to my conversation with Michael. So I think all of this is, is wonderful and you're right. We we've only just scratched the surface when it comes to the findings and the insights from this year's report. But I think that maybe we could tempt our audience to go find the report, uh, by having you share, perhaps some of the biggest takeaways that you found, what are the things that really resonated you in the 2021? It skills and salary report. Michael 00:32:28 I love the report to begin with. And for me, it really boils down to four simple ideas, right? Um, the first is that companies everywhere in every geography in every are facing tech technology skills, gaps, they're mission critical for their companies. The second thing is that it professionals are eager to learn those mission critical skills, whether they're in cloud or they're in data or security or programming, and third, those same it professionals are finding success, acquiring those skills. And they're using certifications as proof of those skills through both online and live learning. And then fourth companies can accelerate the pace of upskilling with the right training solutions. But if they want to get the maximum impact that they have to be embedded within a company wide learning culture that exists in many places, but not all. Michelle BB 00:33:20 So if I, if I sort of boiled this down, the real answer is you got to invest in your people right Michelle BB 00:33:28 Now. We are fast approaching the end of this segment, but in the spirit of growth and development, I have a final question for you. Look at something. I've asked all of our guests since we started the edge and you are no exception, but as we reflect on the past 19 months, we've, we've all had a different experience when it comes to the impact of the pandemic and, and the impact it's had on our lives. So here's the question. It's a three parter. So you might want to write this down first. What have you learned about yourself throughout the pandemic? Second. How are you applying what you've learned that that could be in the flow of your work or in life, and then finally, what advice would you give to others? So what have you learned? How are you applying it and what advice would you give? Michael 00:34:09 I knew this question was coming. Um, I didn't need to write it down. Um, but at the heart of it, I'm a people person. So I think the thing that I learned, right, and is I really miss the day-to-day interaction with my colleagues. And if in particular, look, this is probably the professor in me. I miss noodling on a whiteboard on some problem or challenge we're facing when it's not part of a meeting. And we start talking and we start noodling and figuring out what we need to do about it. So that's, that's the thing I learned. I think, uh, what I applied as a result from it, I'm actually much, much more active on I am than I used to be. Um, and for me it's because without seeing people in the office, it's my best way to maintain that sort of informal personal connection. Um, and we get a fair amount of work done that way as well. And so, uh, my advice, if I were giving advice, say to my college aged daughter, as she entered the workforce, it would be, don't just rely upon structured time and meetings and structured emails to interact with their colleagues. Um, I am, and phone they've always been important, but even more important now that working at home and working remotely, uh, has become more than norm for us. Michelle BB 00:35:34 No, I love that. I love that. I'd really like to thank both Michael and Angie for joining us on the edge and sharing their incredible insight. I've learned a great deal, and I'm excited to go read the report in full, and I encourage our listeners to do that. If you haven't read the 2021, it skills and salary report go do so head over to skillsoft.com, download the full report. And you'll find what we talked about today. And so much more, whether you're a tech leader seeking to address the skills gap in your own workforce, you're an it professional with the need to enhance and grow your own skills, where you just have a desire to learn more about the rapidly changing it landscape. There is no shortage of insight within the Skillsoft global knowledge, 2021. It skills and salary report to our listeners. Thank you for tuning into this. And every episode as we unleash our edge together, and on behalf of the entire Skillsoft team, we encourage you to keep learning, keep growing and in light of our conversation today, consider asking yourself, what are you doing to maintain a culture of continuous learning? How are you growing your own skills and those of your workforce and your organization? I'm Michelle BB. This is The Edge. And until next time be well.

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