What the Polls Say: A Report from Our Webinar Audience
Deborah Bigelow Crawford has more than 20 years of experience in business management and handles the operational and administrative functions of PM Solutions. Ms. Bigelow Crawford also serves as Co-CEO of the PM College®, PM Solutions' training division, where she is responsible for the fiscal management and quality assurance of all training and professional development programs. Prior to joining PM Solutions, she served as the Executive Director of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and was instrumental in providing the foundation and infrastructure for the exponential growth that the Institute has maintained over the last 10 years. In addition, she served as the Executive Director of the PMI Educational Foundation. Over the last decade, she has authored numerous articles in PM Network, Chief Project Officer, and Optimize magazines. Ms. Bigelow Crawford is also co-author of the book Project Management Essentials. She has presented a variety of papers as a speaker at international symposia and conferences, and is a member of the National Association of Female Executives and the Project Management Institute.
Our latest webinar, presenting the results of our new research study, The State of Project Management 2020, took place on July 21. We've been crunching the numbers from the interactive poll that was part of that online event. The poll asked attendees to describe their organization's training program, and asked how many days of training were provided annually, on what topics, and how the courses were delivered ... whether in the classroom, virtually, a combination of those, or if individuals pursued self-guided training. The purpose was to compare the attendee poplulation with the results in the study, which showed a dramatic divide between high-performing organizations (see figure below) in terms of the amount of training they offer, as well as the types of training. We were also curious to see if our own experience of companies shifting largely to virtual training was reflected in the responses from our audience.
Just over half (52%) of those who responded to the interactive poll (about 60% of those attending the webinar) say their organization offers 5 or more days of training per year.
Of those, the vast majority say the training offered is a mix of classroom and virtual training methods. Of those who say their training is self-guided, most have only one or two training days per year. This finding points to an unfortunate reality: that organizations who are relying on employees to self-train on their own time aren’t doing themselves any favors. If we want skilled employees, it’s best to invest in them.
Project management basics is by far the most popular topic for training, with over 76% of attendees reporting that their organizations offer it. Of the remaining 24%, many offer “other” topics, mostly in the realm of industry-specific topics or software/tools training. A minority offer only advanced topics: leadership, benefits management, and portfolio management.
One surprise is the prevalence of Organizational Change Management as a training topic: 35% of attendees say their companies train in OCM. That’s a good sign!
If you missed the webinar, no worries: the recorded version is posted here! We will also be answering questions that we did not have time to respond to during the question and answer period over on the PM Solutions blog over the next few weeks.
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