The demand for expert technical skills has never been higher. Organisations are increasingly challenged to find and retain highly skilled talent, with recruitment often proving both difficult and costly. To address this skills shortage, we partnered with one of our most important customers, a global technology leader, to design the Flint Academy, an innovative programme that empowers existing employees to develop the expertise needed in-house.
For more than 25 years, Flint has supported companies in finding top talent while also providing solutions that enable the adoption of the latest technologies and drive the success of our partners. In recent years, we have observed that it has become increasingly challenging for organisations to attract and retain highly skilled resources due to rapid economic and technological changes. In many cases, it has proven both difficult and costly to find resources and redeploy them within their own organisation. The market for expert technical labour is highly competitive, and the race for top talent is fiercer than ever.
Flint Academy: Targeted Upskilling
In recent months, we have supported one of our most important and longstanding customers, a worldwide technology leader, in delivering an innovative programme designed to empower existing employees within one of their end customers to address the skills shortage internally, reducing the reliance on external resources. Since the end user operates in a highly specialised government sector, the programme also leverages internal team members who already possess the necessary security clearances and screening, ensuring full compliance with regulatory requirements.
The Flint team designed a 16-week programme to take a group of existing employees and cross train them in all aspects of Data Centre operations, with the goal of enabling them to independently run and manage their own data centre environment upon completion.
A Tailored Training Approach
To meet our partner’s needs, the Flint Academy delivered a fully managed programme covering:
- Cisco specific technology training and certifications for:
- CCNA,
- CCNP (DCCOR: Implementing and Operating Cisco Data Center Core Technologies, DCID: Designing Cisco Data Center Infrastructure & DCACI: Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure)
- Intersight Managed Mode training with Cisco UCS X-Series
- Industry specific training on best practices and frameworks:
- ITIL Foundation v4, ITIL Create, Deliver and Support
- Data Center management guidance
- DCFC, Data Center Foundation Certificate & CDCP, Certified Data Center Professional
- As well as Soft Skills to assist them with communication, teamwork, creativity, adaptability, problem-solving, work ethic, critical thinking and conflict management such as:
- Basic Emotional Intelligence
- Creative Thinking and Problem Solving
- Communication Skills and Resolving Conflicts
- Team Development
- Learning Styles and Personal Development
- Negotiation and Consulting Skills
- Cultural Awareness
- Business Writing
- Presentation Skills
- Planning and Time Tracking
- Assertiveness
The managed programme included a combination of instructor-led training, practical lab work, and instructor-supported self-study, ensuring a high pass rate for the overall programme and delivering a team of highly motivated, highly skilled employees ready to be deployed into the production environment and run their own infrastructure autonomously.
We’re delighted to say that the programme has now been extended and will be rolled out across a number of other departments within the same end customer.
The innovative approach to create and incubate internal talent has been highly successful and is a model that is thoroughly transferable to other customers and applications.
Interested in what the Flint Academy do for your team?
If you’d like to learn more about how Flint can help create a bespoke Flint Academy programme to support your own team’s growth aspirations, then please contact us through the form below or email us at [email protected], and one of our team will contact you directly.
