It is now more important than ever to provide opportunities to your team to improve and upskill their expertise. Here is a sample of three reasons compiled from various studies on the importance of training:
- It’s the pathway to the creation, deployment, and maintenance of value-added services like managed whole home Wi-Fi and smart home.
- It helps companies retain employees especially in a competitive marketplace.
- A well-trained team with the right mix of technical know-how and hands-on skills, gives companies a competitive edge and helps contribute to profitability.
I recently spoke with Dean Wood, WAN Technician with Citizens Telephone Cooperative, and got his thoughts on the value of Calix Education Services and key takeaways from some of his recent Calix Academy experiences.
Tom: You recently took the AXOS Learning Path course on the Introduction to SMx. Why was it an important course and what did you learn from it?
Dean: We have gone from using Occam products to now using Calix. During that time, I configured a lot of things into the CMS element management platform on my own, so it’s probably not configured with all the latest best practices. With our transition to AXOS and SMx, I wanted to change that, and make sure it was configured correctly to enable scalability and proper management. I wanted to start out with a clean install and the Introduction to SMx course helped me meet that objective by going over the best practices for setting up the application.
Tom: You also took the Wi-Fi Technician Specialist course? Did you find it beneficial and why?
Dean: The Wi-Fi Technician Specialist course was one of the best classes I have attended. You can do a web search on a lot of the topics about Wi-Fi, but you’ll have a hard time finding out about best practices. The Wi-Fi Technician Specialist course covered all of the needed Wi-Fi technologies along with the best practices and troubleshooting. The discussion on troubleshooting was very helpful and it gave me more insight into ways to better handle service impacting problems and basically help me do my job better.
One of the other things I liked about the course was that it’s more than just learning about Wi-Fi technology, and if you had a question, the instructor was there to answer it to the extent you needed.
Anybody new to working with Wi-Fi needs to take this course. It has helped me step up my game with troubleshooting and maintaining CPE gear. I’ve been recommending the course to my coworkers in the company and I would recommend it to others.
Tom: Is certification important to you and how you perform your job?
Dean: I like the challenge of certification, and I think every company should have at least someone trained and certified on best practices. While the certification process took a few months to prepare, it definitely paid off. I am very interested in the AXOS Certification options that are being developed. AXOS is where we want to be, and certification would be helpful.
If you want to find out how Calix Academy courses can benefit your team like it has Citizens, check out our web page and contact a Calix Education Services Consultant.