Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.36 2013.10.01 Takahashi Minoru

A company's IT adoption has nothing to do with employees' IT certifications

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


“I want my employees to obtain IT-related certifications, but which ones are best?”
“I’m thinking of hiring someone from an IT vocational school next fiscal year—what do you think?”
We often receive questions like these from company presidents.


Our straightforward response is:
“There is no connection between certifications and aptitude.”
Strictly speaking, this isn’t entirely accurate—there is some connection—but
we often use such strong language to help them rethink their perspective.


If an employee possesses the necessary aptitude,
even employee can properly interpret instructions and perform their duties even without a qualification.
If they lack that aptitude,
even even a qualified employee will fail to understand the instructions, and operations will come to a halt.


"Certifications that are supposed to indicate aptitude based solely on the credential" are very costly (in terms of hiring expenses).
For certifications where the standard allowance is around 10,000 to 20,000 yen,
we believe that, unless a certain number of certified employees are required for the company’s operations,
we believe that, in reality, such qualifications are of little use to the company.


Judging an individual employee’s aptitude based solely on the qualifications they hold
is very difficult and risky.


In fact, when recruiting members or selecting contractors,
we rarely pay any attention to certifications.
We rarely even ask questions like, “Do you hold any certifications?”
Even among our members, we go about our daily work without knowing each other’s qualifications, let alone our educational backgrounds (in some cases).
In the IT field, unless we're talking about something truly high-level, qualifications—including degrees—are "nothing special, really."


Given this reality, it’s a waste of resources to require employees to obtain certifications.
If you’re going to spend the same amount of money, it would be far more beneficial for the CEO to study in between daily business operations and earn the qualifications personally.
would be far more beneficial for the company.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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