As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented rate, leaders must foster a knowledge-centric culture within their organization. Investment in upskilling and reskilling of their employees is essential, ensuring they have the capabilities across their workforce to meet both current and future demands. Employees, regardless of their role or level within the organization, must learn new skills, increase their level of expertise, and evolve with the demands of the market. If you’re not growing your skills, you’re falling behind.
At PLATO, we understand the importance of skills development to not only close critical skill gaps, but also to enhance employee engagement and retention. Our approach combines rigorous training with real-world experience, equipping our teams with the expertise needed to excel in today’s digital landscape. As a company committed to creating opportunities for Indigenous people in the tech workforce, we’ve seen firsthand how investment in training and career development fuels both innovation and economic growth. We recently sat down with PLATO’s Director of Training & Apprenticeships, Ellen Knickle, to explore trends in upskilling and how organizations can future-proof their workforce.
Why is upskilling and reskilling essential for organizations in today’s tech landscape?
Given the rapid, ever-increasing rate of change in today’s technology and organizations’ digitization efforts, everyone, regardless of their position in the organization, must upskill or reskill. That means learning new skills, increasing your level of expertise, and evolving with the demands of the market. If you’re not growing your skills, you’re falling behind.
What are the biggest skill gaps organizations should be addressing right now, particularly in cybersecurity?
For well over 15 years, Cybersecurity has been a major concern for companies, regardless of the industry. The biggest challenge is that the “bad guys,” hackers and cybercriminals, do this as a full-time job because it’s a lucrative business. They share their knowledge. The “good guys,” businesses running legitimate operations, are facing a cyber skills shortage that shows no signs of catching up with the threat landscape. It’s important that all employees in every business increase their security awareness. Business with a security “blue team” defending their assets, intellectual property and data need to ensure security staff stay current and constantly upskill. That will enable security teams to perform efficiently and effectively. Companies fortunate enough to have a “red team” who go on the offensive and simulate outside and insider-attacks, perform ethical hacking and Penetration Testing. They’ll detect threats that might otherwise be missed or overlooked.
What is PLATO doing to respond to this cyber skills gaps in the market?
Ethical hacking and Penetration Testing are specialized skills; PLATO is developing a Penetration Testing course for our employees, allowing our testers to bring that lens to customers, and build a secure software development lifecycle.
What can companies do to help improve security throughout the SDLC?
My advice is to do a shift-left in security; that is think about security early in the software or product development lifecycle, right from the planning and design stage, through architecture, development, and testing. Don’t wait until applications are built to test for vulnerabilities, prevent them from existing in the first place.
Are there other skill gaps that organizations should be addressing? AI is another area that is changing daily. Most companies are building AI into their products, services and process. Again, if you’re not using AI and leveraging the efficiencies it offers, you quickly will fall behind.
Having said that, there are some important things to think about. AI governance is important, how will you use it, leverage it and do so ethically. Fact-check, and make sure not to plagiarize if work is AI generated. Look out for biases in Generative AI. If the data provided during training was not large enough, broad enough or varied enough there can be built-in bias. These are things that people need to be aware of when they are using AI tools.
Again, here at PLATO we are investing in AI-driven Software Testing and will be upskilling our teams to make our testing practices are faster and more efficient. In addition, we are working with industry leaders, like TELUS, where PLATO’s team is testing new AI-based applications through a specifically Indigenous lens to ensure sensitivity across cultural differences.
How does PLATO’s model of training and employment create a sustainable talent pipeline for its clients?
PLATO’s training and employment model grew from a skills gap in the market. Software testers were, and still are, in high demand. In 2015, when the idea for the train-and-employ model germinated, Indigenous people were underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Denis Carignan, PLATO’s President and Keith MacIntosh, PLATO’s CEO, believed that training and hiring Indigenous people to become software testers would have a positive impact on First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, and provide a ready-made, skilled talent pool. This has proven to be a successful model and has an added benefit of providing role models to younger people in communities across the country.
Our training plan is an outcome of the business forecast. The Training team uses a rigorous candidate evaluation process for our program, and the quality of our training results in strong graduate software testers. The outcome is a sustainable talent pipeline, ensuring enterprises have sufficient resources with the right skills to complete their initiatives.
When combined with the upskilling PLATO offers employees, we have an exceptional talent pipeline making us competitive with larger system integrators and consulting companies. We offer huge value to our clients in areas of testing and consulting, while providing PLATO employees with a variety of career paths. It’s a win-win-win for us, our clients and our employees.
How does PLATO’s approach to training ensure that employees are prepared for future technological shifts?
We look at technology trends, read market reports and we talk to clients and partners to get a view to the future. That shapes our training plan, and we can pivot as market and technology shifts occur. Our training program consists of courses that take anywhere from five months (Software Testing Foundations) to seven weeks for our Accelerated Program, to two to five weeks for specialized upskilling courses, like Accessibility Testing or Automation Testing.
PLATO wants to ensure employees deepen and broaden their skills to maintain a mature talent pipeline.
Please describe how PLATO’s clients are benefiting / will benefit from its upskilling initiative.
Clients recognize that their need for some of the specialized skills, such as Test Automation Specialists, Performance Testers, Business Analysts and Project Managers can be cyclical. They may not need permanent or full-time staff for these roles, or often they temporarily need to augment their staff to complete an initiative they have underway. That’s where PLATO’s skilled talent pipeline comes into play, particularly the specialized upskilling courses we offer, which are short in duration (two to five weeks), and can be offered frequently and on short notice to meet client needs.
What is next for PLATO in terms of supporting enterprise-level clients with workforce development?
We have plans to offer AI-Driven Software Testing, Performance Testing and Penetration Testing this year and we are exploring Leadership Training to help both new and seasoned managers become leaders. There is a significant and key difference between being a manager and being a leader. People who have worked with a strong charismatic leader that people admire, trust, are motivated and inspired by will immediately relate. It’s why I advocate for leadership training.
Some people are natural leaders, but it is a skill that people can develop. It’s critical for participants to practice what they learn. While that is the case with any new skill, it’s particularly important for leadership skills. Leaders require emotional maturity and emotional intelligence, both of which can be developed with time and opportunity.
Future-proofing starts with the right partner. Let’s discuss how PLATO can help strengthen your resourcing strategy: info@platotech.com!