The Importance of Employee Training and Development
At Engineered Controls we spend a great amount of time recruiting and interviewing top electrical, mechanical and IT engineering prospects to join our company. But to find someone that is knowledgeable in all three of these technology areas can be a challenge.
As owner of a building technology company like Engineered Controls, I was frustrated by how little cross-training opportunities are available to employees in the control industry in general. While there are plenty of classes, seminars and training materials for those in just one of the three areas, there was very little out there that would help them to tie the three together.
We realized that if we could not find the necessary training modules that would best educate our employees or potential employees, it was very likely that others who ran companies similar to ours were having the same struggle. This led to the concept of developing our own in-house, instructor-lead training program that would help not only our employees develop the required skills needed to become competent, but could also help train those from other companies as well. With this in mind, we began work with our building technology distribution partner, Control Depot, to develop Control Depot University. The end goal of this program is to take the amount of training time to educate employees in building technology and controls from the typical three-year process to somewhere closer to nine months.
Our pilot program was launched in March of 2016 with eight of our newest employees enrolling in an HVAC Control Systems class. This 12-week class is designed to give the students an in-depth understanding of key building technology concepts on HVAC fundamentals, commercial heating and cooling systems, HVAC equipment and IAQ, security videos and access control systems, building automation systems and user interfaces. Additional advanced classes will be available in BAS networks and web-based controls, Energy Audits, BAS interoperability and advanced technologies.
Engineered Controls has high standards when it comes to our employee knowledge and competency. By creating our own formal training programs that spans a wide range of technical areas, we know that we will be creating a stronger, more innovative team that can not only serve our clients on a higher level, but also experience more personal job satisfaction and fulfillment. We look forward to being able to replicate this training program for other companies so they can educate their own employees and create a better overall industry experience.
Engineered Controls truly feels that people are our most important asset and we are excited to launch a program that will enhance their careers as well as provide a better customer service experience for our clients.