Paper Objectives
Successful companies should always set goals that can be achieved only with the help of employees and their skills. It is crucial to make regular testing procedures for workers and understand the level of their knowledge at the beginning of project execution and in the end to ensure stability in professional growth. The paper will propose evaluation criteria that can be used to judge the complete work’s effectiveness and estimate the gaps in the beginning. Moreover, it will show what lessons should be learned by all parties in the firm and how closing strategy can help to achieve the desired outcomes.
Evaluation Criteria
The company should test the quality of the provided courses and trust the third-party vendor who develops and delivers the improvement methods. The lessons should be relevant to workers’ skills and aimed at closing all the knowledge gaps to meet customers’ needs and wants. However, without employees’ interest, the courses will be ineffective. More than half of the workers should complete the courses before the project’s launch to allow managers to understand the idea’s potential and possible success.
The number of employees who take the training should increase when the project is executed after 12 months. The IT department should control the progress and make records using HR software. Employees should be integrated with the annual review HR software to introduce this regulation. IT departments must develop effective software to track, monitor, and update progress. The yearly performance should be calculated using this software to assess employees.
To make the evaluation process successful, it is crucial to make the use of new IT systems easy for all workers. Therefore, people may become more integrated into the education process and stay more motivated to achieve the goals that will affect their status. This aspect leads to the following requirement of evaluation, which is an expansion of employees’ skills in other related spheres.
For example, the HR department should not neglect the growth of knowledge in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook. Specific courses should be produced to make further skill assessments and measure employee growth. The financial aspect should also be considered, as the return on investment cannot be harmful if the company aims to improve operations. Moreover, this financial regulation should control the complicated project within the budget.
Changes Over Time
The evaluation requirements and standards can change over time because some goals and aims are being achieved, and they evolve into new structures. Kennedy-Chouane (2020) stated that evaluation criteria should always be aligned with the project’s objectives to ensure no contradictions appear and that success is achieved. As the company progresses, the initial goals may change, and, in this case, a shift in evaluation criteria appears.
Additionally, some contexts, markets, and IT technologies may change. Workers should be trained to give quick responses to problems in a fast-changing environment, and the different types of awards can boost effective changes. Consequently, regulations should stay flexible and adaptable to new business strategies.
Project Closure
Closing a project is one of the main steps to success, as it is essential to complete all deliverables and satisfy the needs of stakeholders. The process can include reviewing all activities to ensure that every party is satisfied with the results and that all goals and objectives were met. Additionally, the report should be produced to overview it in the future. The main activities are summarized in the paper, and the results of testing procedures are included there.
The report should also include the problems faced during the execution and the solutions applied to cope. The closure procedure should also include a stakeholder review to allow future partners to see real drawbacks and opportunities. The documents must be archived for future reference when all information is retrieved. Project closure can help to evaluate the performance over time by reviewing the archives and comparing past and present results.
Lessons Learned
The skill gap project is a perspective idea that allows workers to gain new skills and boost existing knowledge. The provided courses showed that the interest of employees stays high and their level of motivation does not decrease. The HR department has estimated the project’s approximate Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and stated that five months would be needed for the execution. However, workers in this department have stated that three months before and twelve months after the project are required to prepare workers and close all operations.
This strategy provides a valuable lesson regarding project development and regulation. Such gaps as little knowledge in Microsoft systems caused performance issues in the previous projects, and it is crucial to learn from mistakes to apply new knowledge to the skill gap idea. This lesson allows us to pay attention to the technological advances used in the company and invest more in the IT skill development of workers. However, motivation should not be neglected, and managers should learn the value of human factors to introduce effective training programs.
References
Kennedy-Chouane, M. G. (2020). Better criteria for better evaluation – revised evaluation criteria definitions and principles for use. OECD.