If you're just starting to incorporate project management into your business, you may think you need to go big or go home. As with any new endeavor, though, the best solution is to start small and build for the future. To that end, consider this: you can take any interested worker you have and turn them into a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) in record time. This move uses the human resources you already have to your best advantage while still delivering everything you're looking for from an early-stage project management approach.

Why You Need Employees With Project Management Skills

The term 'project management' refers the set of accepted business practices which establish how to properly conduct all stages of planning, execution and wrap-up over the life cycle of a project. This may sound like a niche knowledge base, but think about it; at its core, every business is a series of projects. The organizational competencies (such as budgeting and keeping track of expenses) and interpersonal skills (such as conflict defusing techniques and leadership tactics) that this discipline teaches are useful in virtually all workplaces.

You don't need to hold a project management title or even be any kind of manager to benefit from project management training. Employees with these skills are better at things like self-governance, leadership and course correction and can use them to do their job more effectively.

Disseminating project management concepts and strategies into your workforce as a whole is a great way to potentially boost productivity and give everyone a basic understanding of what optimal working patterns look like. If you have the will and resources to go even further, having a dedicated and fully trained project manager on your staff places your operations under the care of an expert who can smooth out most logistical difficulties and ensure that deadlines are satisfied and goals are met or exceeded.

Training vs. Hiring

Hiring or consulting with an individual who has already completed some project management training may seem like the obvious way to get this knowledge working for you, but it can be a surprisingly costly and shortsighted decision. The mere act of hiring any employee costs an average of $4,129 and 42 days of lost time, and that doesn't take into account any wage premiums that project management-trained employees might successfully command for their proven skills.

Investing in training, however, actually acts as insurance against these burdensome costs. Seeing solid evidence that their employer values their contributions and wants to help them develop their career makes for happy employees; happy employees are generally more committed to the company, are willing to put in more time and effort, and stay in their jobs longer instead of looking elsewhere.

In fact, a full 95% of hiring managers surveyed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development explicitly consider employee-training costs to be a critical part of their employee retention strategy for these reasons. Training existing employees is therefore not only cheaper, but provides additional attractive benefits for employers like you.

Why Choose CAPM Certification?

There are many excellent certifications available for those seeking to take on project management duties. However, most require either formal education in the field or significant amounts of work experience - sometimes you even need both. While these programs are great options for professionals who have always had their sights set on doing this kind of work, it does little to help employers train their existing workers.

Rather than being able to select the most promising candidates to invest in, a firm wanting to use these kinds of courses for training would have to hope they had existing employees who already met (or came close to meeting) the required criteria, making these courses a less-than-optimal proposition for talent development.

CAPM training is the exact opposite of this. Instead of trying to teach higher-level technical concepts to a very select audience, this entry-level certification that works to establish the very basics of this discipline in a way that interested newcomers can understand and relate to. This means that it should be relatively easy to get your staff members ready and enthusiastic to participate.

The certification process is also short and relatively inexpensive, making it a mostly risk-free option to determine who might merit even further project management training. Those who seem to have an aptitude for project management can take a quick and painless first foray into the field, letting you both assess whether or not the proposed shift is really a good fit or not. If it is, you may find yourself developing an incredible new asset for your company.

Are Your Employees Ready for Project Management Training?

For all these reasons, CAPM certification training is an excellent choice for forward-thinking employers who want to use their human resources to take their business to the next level. Infotec's CAPM course is an excellent option for employers based in and around Virginia Beach, VA.

This 3-day commitment teaches project management fundamentals in an approachable way, using games, activities and lectures to communicate core concepts and culminating in a comprehensive exam. Call us now to hear how you can get your company started on the path to a brighter future with project management.

For more information about Infotec or any of our programs click here: http://www.infotectraining.com/ or https://ops.infotecpro.com/course_schedule/course_schedule.cfm.