Nurturing a Culture of Learning and Knowledge Sharing

MITTS Ltd, being a knowledge based organisation, and having knowledge as one of its key and primary resources, acknowledged through its Human Resources Strategy that such a fertile resource needs to be cultivated and nurtured in order to ensure that the MITTS Ltd people, which after all, are the competitive edge of the Company, not only remain abreast with developments in the field of business and ICT, but are also given the opportunity to grow and grow further.

The emphasis in 2002 was again placed on developing ICT and e-related skills further so as to ensure that MITTS Ltd has the skills capacity in readiness to deliver solutions that are required by its business partners and to be in readiness for the advent of a multi year programme of considerable magnitude in relation to e-Government.

As a reinforcement of the 2001 Human Resource Development Strategy, the 2002 focus was again directed towards accredited courses. In particular, MITTS Ltd carried out major human resource development initiatives in Microsoft 2000 certification and advanced web development technologies (.net, HTML, XML, and JAVA). Moreover, in 2002, a strong basis was acquired in database administration and system development tools, whilst new initiatives naturally focused on the emerging importance of Data Protection and Information Security. With respect to data protection compliance, 50 people across departments received extensive training. More training was also directed towards other technical areas and towards management / soft skills such as service management (using the accredited ITIL course), and customer care. The Human Resource Development efforts reached the six days average per employee. The 2002 Human Resources Strategy for MITTS Ltd was, however, far more encompassing. Knowledge sharing and a culture of learning were the two passwords for the access to the envisioned knowledge based system. Some of the major achievements in this respect included Teambuilding, the sealing of an agreement with the Estonian Informatics Centre, the revamping of the MITTS Ltd archives, the launch of the internal e-Newsletter (eXchanges) and the launch of a corporate intranet, which includes templates, latest news, sharing of MITTS Ltd published documents or presentations and company policies. The next evolution in the strategy of nurturing learning is the introduction of e-Learning in the first quarter of 2003, where in 2002 background work was carried out in order to plan for its roll-out to MITTS Ltd people.

Teambuilding – Next Round!

The teambuilding programme launched in late 2000 and with its second phase carried out in 2001, saw the programme span across all management levels. The third phase that was rolled-out in 2002, however, went deeper and wider across the organisation where intra departmental teambuilding sessions were organised over a multitude of two-day sessions encompassing all MITTS Ltd people. The teambuilding sessions were aimed at enhancing teamwork also through the sharing of knowledge and experiences. The success of this phase encouraged MITTS Ltd to continue with its drive towards continuously enhancing teambuilding.

The next stage, which is planned to commence in May 2003, will now move to the next evolutionary teambuilding stage – that of inter departmental teambuilding, with the aim of the programme being that of having technical and professional people that originate from different departments have the opportunity to interact as teams in the context of fun but hard working sessions that instigate the culture of team working even further.

Overseas Attachments

Over 2002, considerable work was carried out to provide the possibility to MITTS Ltd employees to gain exposure with similar organisations abroad and with clients. In particular, overseas assignments included support at Embassies and the Customs Project in Denmark, however, the major milestone was achieved in August 2002, with the agreement with the Estonian Informatics Centre which now allows for the exchange of employees between both organisations for knowledge transfer periods between three to four weeks. The first fact finding mission took place in November 2002.