Press Releases
Safari Books Online Survey of Technology Professionals Shows Frequent Use of Inaccurate Information Results in Missed Deadlines, Unhappy Customers and Wasted Time
Working With Tight Timelines and Minimal Training, Technology Workers Indicate Need for Reliable Online Information to Improve Collaboration, Speed of Troubleshooting and Skills Development
SEBASTOPOL, Calif. - May 28, 2008
A Safari Books Online survey of technology workers’ research and collaboration habits released today found that most technology employees work under very tight timelines and find it difficult to find or share collective knowledge with colleagues in their field. A majority of the respondents – 57 percent – spend an hour or less training and sharing information with new employees, and 25 percent of them don’t spend any time training new employees. Lack of shared knowledge or the ability to access accurate information for technology work is taking its toll: almost half of the respondents (45 percent) said the information they found while researching online and later used for critical projects was inaccurate.
IT and development professionals experienced a variety of consequences from using inaccurate information from the web, including:
- - Customers complaining to management
- - Components of the IT network functioning improperly
- - Workers re-doing the entire project
- - Delays in project completion
- - Wasted time trying to make the wrong answer work
- - Increased project costs
Learning Methods: Prevalence of Online Research and Training in Organization
Technology workers were polled on different methods of learning new information – whether by researching online, attending an employer-sponsored structured training course, working toward a university accreditation, etc. The most prevalent form of research was online searching. Eighty-five percent of the workers indicated that they search the Internet for up to two hours per day for answers needed to do their jobs. The most common search was for troubleshooting specific applications (47 percent). Other popular research topics included project management information, technology integration, product information and reviews, and competitive/potential new business partner information.
To supplement the independent online research approach, corporations offer a somewhat limited amount of formal, structured training to their technology employees. Only 23 percent of companies offer their employees in-house structured training courses, and only 20 percent offered reimbursement for higher education costs. Eighteen percent of respondents indicated that their company doesn’t offer any professional development opportunities. Other corporate-sponsored training/research tools included online courses (13 percent), informal training with peers and superiors (13 percent) and access to online information in the form of libraries or databases (11 percent).
The vast majority of IT employees – 65 percent – indicated they would like their organization to provide targeted access to expert information specific to their role. These employees identify trusted sources most often by content owner/publisher (32 percent). Other major factors weighed to determine if online content is trustworthy include comparing multiple sources, testing and debugging, and trial and error. To find this type of information, technology workers are increasingly turning to digital libraries that offer subscriptions accessing thousands of publisher titles in both online book and video formats.
“The little discussed fact in today's business world is the widespread lack of access to vetted, accurate information critical to maintain knowledge and skills in the technology workforce, leading to bad business decisions, lost productivity and increased on-the-job stress,” said Dennis Kilian, vice president of Safari Books Online. “It is no surprise that a staggering percentage of tech workers admitted to having made bad business decisions due to incorrect, incomplete or contradictory information. The survey data mirrors what we hear daily from our customers - access to trusted information is critical to maintaining knowledge and skills within today’s enterprise. Our customers turn to Safari Books Online to solve this very problem.”
Learning Methods: Prevalence of Online Research and Training in Organization
Safari Books Online surveyed a cross-section of technology employees from across the U.S. using an online survey partner, Zoomerang. Titles of the technology professionals surveyed included systems engineers, IT support managers, IT consultants, business architects, database managers, business analysts, GIS coordinators and consultants. Responses were submitted electronically. Valid, complete responses were received from 225 employees. For a complete presentation of results, please contact Safari Books Online or download the presentation at: http://www.safaribooksonline.com/techsurvey.
About Safari Books Online
Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com), founded in 2001 as a joint venture of pre-eminent technology publishers O'Reilly Media Inc. and Pearson Technology Group, is a leading on-demand digital library delivering expert content from the world's thought-leaders in business and technology innovation. Safari offers the combined collections of O'Reilly Media, Prentice-Hall, Addison-Wesley, Microsoft Press, Sams, Que, Peachpit Press, John Wiley & Sons, Adobe Press, Cisco Press, Sun Microsystems Press, Wharton School Publishing, lynda.com, and many more top publishers in one fully searchable database. IT professionals, software developers, web designers, and business and creative professionals use Safari as their primary resource for research, problem solving, learning and certification training. Thousands of books, manuscripts, short topics, articles and instructional video are available from expert authors, innovators and thought leaders. Safari as an essential, always-on business tool is rapidly changing the way corporate, academic and training organizations access information and is enabling increasingly mobile workforces to get technical and business reference resources anytime and from anywhere. Safari offers a range of business-to-business product mixes and pricing programs for every sized organization and a business-to-consumer product option for individual users.
Contacts
Safari Books Online
Paige Mazzoni, 707-827-4139
pmazzoni@safarijv.com
or
Schwartz Communications
Dara Sklar or Michael Kellner, 415-512-0770
safari@schwartz-pr.com
