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Career Idea: Training, Certification, And Retention

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

In a recent discussion with some people on retaining and training workers, I noted a simple solution to getting people trained and getting them to stay.

“Why not support them in getting certifications?”

My logic is simple

  1. You need to train people.
  2. Training isn’t always fun.
  3. Certifications are seen as valuable to one’s career.
  4. Certifications often require training – and that’s probably more interesting than just some class.
  5. So a company that supports certifications gets people educated, and if those people aren’t big on training, they may like a certification better.
  6. People getting the certification feel valued (and trusted as certifications would make it easier to look for a job).
  7. People will feel confident because in case of a layoff or something they’re still more valuable. It’s insurance.

Imagine a workforce that knows it’s going to get valuable training and certifications? That they’ll have that extra information on their resume or in their job review? Even if a new job may be tempting, why leave a place that recognizes you and helps you improve?

(Besides, the longer you’re there the more loyal you may be.)

I had two companies support me in certifications, and it certainly affected my attitudes towards them – in a postiive way. Someone shelled out the money to get me certified, and both allowed me to get trained on their own time. It’s hard to turn that down, and I stuck with them both untilthe bitter end.

So consider that next time you’re trying to figure out how to get better employee retention, or get people trained, or even boost morale. Guaranteed certifications may be something to ty.

Though I’m still getting my acquaintances to try it out at least they’re listening . . . though maybe you’ll have more luck.

– Steve

No Man’s Sky – What’s Next?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

As noted due to my interest with No Man’s Sky I’m blogging about it as it fits my interests in computers, media, and of course procedural generation!

I’m looking forward to No Man’s Sky. I expect it to be a hit. I expect it to be huge. I’ve also wondered that after that “huge hitness” what’s next for i?

This is worth asking because if NMS is a hit, what happens afterwards may be a model for other, similar properties. NMS’ broad scope and procedural content make it stand out – but as there’s many procedural games with broad scope out there and/or coming.

Or in short, I assume what happens to NMS may provide a template for future games and concurrent ones.  I want to try and guess now.

Here’s a few things I see:

* GO LONG TERM: It sounds like NMS is going to be around for awhile, and with a galaxy to explore there’s certainly many places to go. We’ve seen long-term games with broad content have endurance (Minecraft, Terraria) and others with similar ambitions (Starbound). NMS is something I can see people playing obsessively, though . . .
* NEEDS MORE: Even hough I’m jazzed for it, I’m not sure the current content set would keep me playing regularly beyond 3-6 months. I think NMS will need to add more content and features over time to maintain interest, else it’ll be for dedicated explorers (which may be the goal).  Dedicated explorers would probably play this for 1-3 years.
* MAY ENTER PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS: NMS has been on Colbert, been in the news, it’s got the kind of buzz that could make it become “A thing” like Minecraft – something everyone hears about and many try. If successful, it will inspire others to try the same thing (much as Minecraft did), and may give it a longer life.  That will also inspire imitators (I imagine at some point procedural games will become comparatively common).  That gives it more life.
* WILL LIKELY GO TO ALL PLATFORMS: If NMS is the big hit that I suspect it is, I think there will be an obvious effort to get it to other platforms (I’m at least sure Microsoft will want it on X-Box, but I think the X_box will become a sealed PC next iteration so it might not be an issue). There’s no reason not to extend it, and I imagine there’s demand.  (The fact Starbound is on X-Box intrigues me)
* HOW FAR CAN IT GO? The limit of NMS is that its own limits work against it. Hard/impossible to find people. No/little building or influence. As big a booster as I am I’m not sure how far NMS will go before it seems that there’s not as much interest. People do like interaction and exploring and pimping out equipment isn’t like building castles.  I also wonder how much they can add on to a game with so much procedurally balanced content.

My prediction on NMS is that it’s got up to 5 years of life in it, but I can’t see it bearing large expansions.

However, an interesting question is how it could not be expanded on, but retrofitted.  With all that code and all that work, it might be better if Hello Games focused on No Man’s Sky II and made it truly long-term.

– Steve

Civic Diary 4/9/2016 – Community

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

So my latest Civic Diary is on community.

As I document my experiments in being a better citizen (which I haven’t exactly defined, but we’ll learn along), I wanted to share my latest finding on community.

My local writer’s group needed me to take over a writing event as the person running it at the time had a change of schedule and wouldn’t be doing so for quite some time.  I took over out of a desire to help out – it’s a good group that focuses on getting together and writing.

At that point I suddenly thought about my other activities in communities.  Helping at a museum.  My video gaming group.  Movie nights for another club.  All those little things (remember when I mentioned the power of weak links?) that create alliances and bonds.  I saw how important they were.

All these little bits of community involvement are important as community is important.  Community ties us together, community helps us connect, community builds something bigger than us.  If you want to be civicly engaged, building some community, virtually any kind, is important – and lets you use other interests to do good.

Some community seem trivial?  That Steven Universe fan group could also let people network to find jobs.  Your anime club can do charities.  Your doll collector group might be a place where you can offer your skills in accounting to someone with tax questions.  Multiply those opportunities over a lifetime and you can see how important community -any community – is to being a citizen.

Obviously, I think we need to consciously think what kind of community we should build. I will doubtlessly go on about that more in the future.

A few more thoughts on community building:

  • * Real community is built by real people – be it face to face or with your real name, yu need to connect as human beings.
  • * Functional community is integrative, not divisive.  A community ma address a problem, but it does so with a larger purpose of bringing people together.
  • * Community should be connected to the “big picture” even if the big picture is “man we all have hard days, let’s have a movie club every Friday night.”  Insular communities have a way of being very non-civil.
  • * Community has some kind of identity. It needs to know what it is.

So there’s my thoughts.  What’s your community?

– Steve