Does your tech team need a Cloud Skills Assessment?

Today, teams need to keep their skills up to date in order to stay competitive in a fast-paced business environment. In fact, training and development is cited as a top concern for team leaders as we navigate through 2024. It’s been found that adequate training boosts team productivity by 17% —but how can you know what training your team really needs?

This is where a Cloud Skills Assessment comes into play. It’s a powerful tool to help IT team leaders understand their team’s current capabilities, identify gaps and plan ahead. That way, they’re investing in the right training, to help their team hit its goals.

What is a Cloud Skills Assessment?

A Cloud Skills Assessment is a systematic assessment of an organisation’s existing skills and knowledge related to cloud computing technologies. It involves evaluating the proficiency of team members across a range of cloud technologies, identifying areas for improvement, and determining the training requirements necessary to bridge any skill gaps effectively.

Why do organisations use Cloud Skills Assessments?

These in-depth assessments provide organisations with invaluable insights into their current skill landscape, which enables them to align training initiatives with overarching strategic objectives. It means organisations are able to understand what training they truly need, helping to optimise resource allocation and ensuring that efforts are targeted and cost-effective.

Cloud Skills Assessments are important for businesses embarking on a cloud migration or adoption journey, so that leaders can see what skills are needed to effectively leverage these new technologies and platforms.

Similarly, in rapidly evolving industries where staying on the cutting-edge is imperative (such as cybersecurity or data analytics) regular ongoing training is essential. Organisations going through restructures or large shifts in strategy may also warrant a re-evaluation of training needs.

By conducting the assessment and analysis ahead of time, leaders can actively plan for ongoing training needs, map out long-term learning pathways and better align the team’s skills to the company’s needs —now and in the future.

What’s involved in a Cloud Skills Assessment?

A Cloud Skills Assessment is an in-depth audit with a lot of parts to consider. Let’s unpack a few of the key stages of conducting a training analysis in your organisation:

1. Define your objectives: Clearly outline the goals and objectives of the analysis, and your organisational goals. When looking at what skills you need, it’s important to think about what tasks are needed to achieve your goals, and work back from there. Set an “ideal state” that clearly shows what skills are needed to achieve these key objectives.
2. Collect data: Gather information on current skill levels, training history, and organisational requirements through surveys, interviews, and performance evaluations.
3. Analyse the data: Evaluate the collected data to identify trends, patterns, and skill gaps within the organisation. Cross reference your team’s current capabilities with your ideal state from step one.
4. Prioritise learning needs: Looking at the skills gaps you’ve identified, think about what skills are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Prioritise training needs based on urgency, relevance, and potential impact on business outcomes.
5. Develop your cloud training plan: Design a tailored training plan that addresses identified skill gaps and aligns with organisational goals. Try to take a long term view —in one year, where would you like your team to be? Put a plan in place to get them there.
6. Implement Training: Choose a training provider to help you execute the training plan.
7. Evaluate its effectiveness: Continuously monitor and assess the effectiveness of your learning initiatives. Make adjustments as necessary to ensure you’re on the right track to hit your objectives.

What’s next?

To effectively undertake a Cloud Skills Assessment takes time and dedication —and the right tools to collate and analyse a large amount of data! If you think you’re ready to do a skills analysis, but don’t quite know how to get started, reach out to our team today.

If you are currently using AWS, we offer in-depth assessments to businesses looking to transform their approach to training. If you are using Microsoft Azure, we can help you look at your current capabilities, identify any gaps and build your tailored training pathway to help you get your team from where they are, to where you’d like them to be.

Don’t let skill gaps hold your team back – invest in training and pave the way for success. Start your Cloud Skills Assessment today, and a Bespoke Training Consultant will make a time with you to go through the results!