How can employees and employers maximise cloud skills?
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals are increasingly thinking about what they want from work. This is not merely about the increased opportunities offered by remote working, but broader concerns about the company that they’re currently working for. Many people have been rethinking their position and deciding if they would be happier elsewhere, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘The Great Resignation’.
At the same time issues about diversity and inclusion are receiving greater prominence. While this has always been an important issue, it has raised its head since the start of the pandemic, as society and the working world has become much more inclusive. The changes brought about by the pandemic, such as remote working, have given people more of a voice, the equalising effect of everyone having the same amount of space on a zoom screen.
These two huge issues provide a broad and challenging context for current employment, particularly in the technology sector.
What do employers need to deliver?
In his book Drive, Daniel Pink lists three critical factors that people need to work effectively and stay motivated. These are: autonomy, mastery, and purpose and organisations need to deliver all three of these to their employees.
Autonomy, by providing them with the right kind of working environment in which they can thrive and the freedom to do tasks and jobs without being micromanaged and pressurised. Mastery, by giving people the skills to allow them to become masters of their craft. And purpose, by ensuring companies have a strong and supportive organisational culture.
For example, at FinancialForce, we are obviously a cloud company and have invested in a graduate recruitment scheme, that brings new people through into the world of work. If we want those people entering our organisation to have a long career with us or in the cloud industry, it’s our responsibility to provide them with autonomy, mastery and purpose in their working lives..
What does this mean for the cloud?
For people working within the cloud industry, it is not just about having the best technical skills and using the latest tools. It is increasingly important for employees to have a broader range of business skills as well, analytical, business, and communication skills to complement their technology expertise. For example, with most cloud deployments teams from different departments need to work closely together, so effective communication skills are critical. The finance team needs to be kept abreast of what’s happening in the sales department, while the same is true for the sales team.
What’s more, employees from across the business need to be able to talk to each other about what’s happening in their respective departments. This collaborative approach to development inherent in a cloud deployment requires skills that are different and more nuanced from those required for a more traditional technology project.
There is another important change that the cloud has driven. For Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers, It is not just about delivering a one-off project successfully, there is a much greater focus on the renewal of a contract rather than the initial sale. This is because there is greater value to be obtained in building an ongoing relationship and partnership between yourself and the customer. In order to do this, organisations need to be much more customer-centric than ever before. It’s no longer simply about delivering a project – instead, employees need to have a much more customer-centric view of the world so that businesses can deliver longer-term relationships. This necessitates businesses having the right kind of people working for them with a different skills mix and a more customer focussed mindset that may have historically been the case.
As technologists we know and understand that the cloud is intrinsically different from what has gone before. This does not just mean that we are reliant upon different tools and technologies, but we are increasingly dependent on a completely different approach to how we manage our people.
Author:
Andy Campbell, global solution evangelist at FinancialForce
Laura Foster
Laura is techUK’s Head of Programme for Technology and Innovation.