An expert has underlined the important role of technical training in improving the performance and productivity of employees. He said that in line with the fast-paced growth in the software and hardware technology sector, companies and institutions have to cope with this vast progress by providing employees with the necessary technical training.

“Continuous training is crucial for any organization to improve the technical competence of its employees. Technical training should be tailored to the set of skills required at the company or organization,” said Alaa Saafan, who is the managing director of Global Knowledge in Saudi Arabia.

He said that professionally trained employees can assist management and propose new ways to develop their companies' operations at a lesser cost, and can also help the company to provide new and more competitive services.

He added that employees also generally prefer to work at organizations which provide continuous training programs to develop their capabilities, adding that through offering good technical training, organizations can maintain their employee loyalty and can be more likely to attract more qualified employees from other organizations.

“Technical training is also important for any organization to apply a new technical system, which would require tailored professional training for its staff to enable them to operate such a program,” he said. Otherwise “they would fail to benefit from the upgraded technical capabilities and would feel frustrated and might look for job opportunities elsewhere,” Saafan added.

He also noted that technical training companies give trainees short-term specialized professional certificates, but many of these companies lack more general forms of training, while some others do not offer their courses in Arabic, which would create a large barrier for some non-English speaking employees.

He said that Global Knowledge offers practical training programs in both Arabic and English, and that it has offered training courses to government institutions and agencies in the Kingdom such as the Saudi Aramco, National Information Center of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Education, and the National Guard, among others.

He said that there are at least 13 technical training courses in which Saudis and other residents of the Kingdom are interested in.

These include information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), Cisco networks, Microsoft products and services, VM Ware for virtual environment, IBM software and hardware, certified ethical hacking (CEH), Amazon web services, Red Hat operating system, Symantec digital security systems, Brocade storage and networks systems, Oracle databases, Avaya systems, and Jumper Networks.