Technology and its Impact on Your Career Success
In recent years, the nature of the workplace has evolved. Technology has had a resounding impact on the way that people work.
Thanks to new business applications and better mobile connectivity, you don’t even need to visit the office each day to be an effective employee. Around 50% of the U.S workforce will be working remotely soon, according to some studies.
As businesses of all sizes and backgrounds embrace the concept of digital transformation, it’s essential for workers to take charge of their careers, and make sure that they’re ready for the new working environment.
On the one hand, this means researching the marketplace and seeing where your skills align with future roles.
It also means ensuring that you learn the correct skills to protect yourself and your employer in the digital world.
Why Everyone Needs IT Knowledge
Before today, you would have been forgiven for assuming that only IT teams and technical knowledge workers would need a sufficient understanding of things like cybersecurity, digital processing, and data analytics.
However, now that IT is a fundamental part of virtually every industry, employees from any environment need better education in tech.
Broad knowledge of IT security and functionality makes employees more agile and productive, while also ensuring that the businesses that they work for as less likely to fall victim to dangerous and expensive data breaches.
According to a State of the Industry report in 2018, 47% of all business leaders found that human error, like the accidental loss of a device or document by an employee, was the cause of a security issue.
Often, employees aren’t even aware that the things that they’re doing are dangerous from an IT perspective. For instance, over 25% of people in the survey above said that they frequently leave their computers unattended and unlocked.
Bridging the Gap with IT Training
The correct IT knowledge training makes sure that you know exactly which behaviors are most likely to lead to breaches that harm your company and its employees. Additionally, training also ensures that you know how to overcome issues when and if they occur.
A seemingly small error like a misconfigured firewall can wreak havoc and stop business operations for days like it did for three hospitals in the UK. Disaster recovery or business continuity seminar will show individuals what they need to do to reduce the downtime caused by an IT mistake when something goes wrong.
Importantly, while business leaders should constantly be looking for ways to empower their teams with the right training solutions, individual workers also have to take control of their own education.
As an ambitious individual, it’s up to you to make sure that you can build out your resume with the digital skills your current and future employers are looking for.
Show today’s managers and supervisors that you have what it takes to innovate with the latest technology, without taking cybersecurity risks, and your career opportunities will be endless.
How IT Knowledge Helps You Evolve
IT knowledge and digital skills give you the power to remain agile in an ever-changing industry. It’s not just the tech environment that requires digital skills today. Everything from finance to customer service needs a certain level of tech proficiency.
With the right training, you can use the latest technology to be more productive at work.
It’s much faster to create documents digitally, share them with teams through a collaboration app, and work on them with partners with file sharing tools than it is to create a file in-person, scan it into a computer, and invite your coworkers for an in-person meeting.
Digital skills change how you use your time in the workplace. Microsoft said that 90% of jobs will need some manner of digital skills in the next two decades.
What’s more, there will be a higher demand for people with technical skills among companies looking to claim an edge in their market.
5 Ways IT Skills Make You More Agile and Valuable
By investing in your IT knowledge now, you can make sure:
- You know how to keep documents and applications secure, whether you’re using them in the office or at home. This means that you can prove to your employer that you won’t be a risk if you decide that you want to pursue remote working opportunities.
- You can collaborate with a wider range of coworkers from anywhere in the world. If you understand how to use collaboration apps, video-conferencing tools, and other services securely, then you can work with team members no matter where they are. That’s increasingly important in an era of growing globalization.
- You can adapt quickly to business changes: Someone with strong IT knowledge skills will always be ready for the next big update in their workplace. As companies from all backgrounds continue to digitally transform, you can show both your current and future employer that you’re not scared of change.
- You have value in the age of automation. According to some statistics, 30% of tasks are now automatable. As technology continues to evolve, the more skills you have, the less likely you are to become obsolete.
- You can form deeper connections with customers. Stronger knowledge of IT also means that you’ll know how to use various platforms to interact with clients. You may even get a basic knowledge of things like data analytics, so you can track trends and changes in your industry, and make sure that you’re always delivering the best results for your employers.
Stay Up to Date
Many forward-thinking workers are beginning to realize that a commitment to ongoing IT education is crucial to their future. However, it’s not enough to just take a security course once a year.
If you want to thrive in the new tech-focused job market, then you need to be constantly looking for new ways to expand your understanding of the IT space.
From network training to insights into data analysis, education in various parts of the IT environment improves the impact of your resume and gives you the agility you need to keep pursuing your career goals.
About the Author
Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a striving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in the business world. She spends her free time trying out new recipes or reading Scandinavian crime novels. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter @LisaBMichaels.