Continuously Training a Workforce is Key if the Telecom Industry Wants to Aim For Network Reliability

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Wavelengths, an Amphenol Broadband Solutions podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B. Welcome folks to another episode of the show as we continue to explore major trends, technologies, timely news topics, and the people behind the telecom and larger communications industries. Again, make sure you're heading to our website, amphenolbroadband.com for previous episodes of the show, and to make sure you don't miss out on future ones, You can also find other resources related to the topics we'll be breaking down today, as well as more info on our solutions and services. On our website, amphenolbroadband.com, and make sure that you're subscribing to wavelengths on Apple Podcasts and Spotify just hit that subscribe button and you'll get notifications when we drop new episodes and you can also check out the back catalog of conversations. There's plenty of good ones there. Alright, folks. Let's dive in to the episode today. So on today's episode of Wavelength, we're actually turning our focus away from some of our usual topics of technology, technology trends, federal funding initiatives. We spend lots of time breaking those down, and we're actually gonna look at, the telecom and network workforce. Right? The folks that are behind the scenes making it happen for the industry. And more importantly, we're gonna focus in on the importance of continuous education of our network professionals. What do I mean and why? Well, let's give a little more context. We're obviously in an era where, know, networks in general are expanding in scope. They're becoming not only smaller, but bigger. You know, we're seeing them deployed for more use cases and more technologies. In more industries, five g rolling out en masse. The internet of things, both in industrial and home and commercial settings, proliferating an expanding its reach and use cases. Remote work, more prevalent than ever, putting strain on, and, you know, more touch points with network reliability and network consistency between end users. And the telecom industry is obviously at the heart of this transformation But guess what stands between seamless connectivity and catastrophic failure? Well, that would be network reliability and network resilience So as we push the boundaries of what's possible with our networks, the stakes for maintaining a robust network has really never been higher But here's the kicker. Right? It's not just about the tech. More importantly, it's about the people behind the tech that are helping keep things afloat. And that's where today's episode comes in. Today, we're gonna be detailing the importance of technical education for maintaining reliable networks and why up skilling your team is not a nice to have or a fun perk for employee retention. It's actually a must have, and we're gonna explain why. We're gonna discuss actionable strategies for internal onboarding, external technical training, the partnerships and curriculum development and dynamics there and how those educational initiatives directly impact your networks resilience and who better to share these strategies than our very own training manager here at ABS. So I'm pleased to welcome our for today's conversation, mister Charles Dillard. He's training manager for amphenal Broadband solutions. Charles, great to have you on man. How you doing today? I'm doing great, Daniel. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you again for joining us and shedding some light on what is your, expertise, your career, right, is, helping guide the professionals that make the telecom industry possible and make sure that they're fully up to date on changing technologies and dynamics in the industry, and we're gonna break all those down. So again, thanks for sharing your perspectives and knowledge pool with our audience. Wanna go and just jump right in. I gave a few examples, but I wanna paint the big picture, right? So even if this seems a bit elementary, can you share in your view why network reliability has become more in focus. Right? Such a mission critical element for businesses and industry of all walks. Give us your high level thoughts there. First, you have to identify what a reliable network looks like. So now when we talk about hardware and software and how it's evolved, probably the biggest change, is less about a particular software or hardware, but, interfacing, manufactured interfacing with, each other, because there are more people interfacing, you know, with that piece of equipment or that technology or that device. So whether it's a television manufacturer that has apps on their TVs now. And then now you have a cable operator that, you know, needs to, be able to stream content. And you have to have the test equipment that can actually, you know, monitor and test, you know, for, impairments, etcetera. So as we think about hardware and software, the biggest, changes is that more people are coming together and having conversations about, you know, the roadmap, the end goal, and, you know, again, that's probably the biggest, evolution. I'm curious how all of these different things are coming together to impact the workforce that maintains and upgrades these systems, right, have improvements to network tech, expansions of network reach, new networks, has this all created any strain for the network professionals that helped maintain said networks? What's been some of the domino effects over the last few years? Great question. When you look at the workforce, you know, you have your two segment, like, new employees, And then you have your existing employees that may have been around, you know, for, you know, years, decades, even. And with, any time there's new technology, you know, there's a learning curve. And what we're seeing is is that, with new, people that are coming on, you know, they, they were born, you know, with mobile devices in their hand, understanding, WiFi and what an SSID is. Whereas we may have some more tenure employees who, you know, came up from the old school way of, you know, everything was just RF, analog, And over the years, they have, had to get out of their comfort zone, and know anytime with hardware and software updates, especially software. It changes so fast. If you think about, you know, your mobile phone, no matter who your provider is, they're seeing there always be an update that they want you to download because they're continually trying to improve their networks and they're noticing, you know, some, bugs in the system, etcetera. So, you know, again, it's important to stay on top of, you know, understanding these technologies, but in the workforce, again, making sure that everyone, you know, understands whatever, you know, industry you're in, the services that you're providing, how it works, and how you're able to troubleshoot it, you know, if there is a problem with it. I wanna intersect another, interesting transformation that we're seeing not just in network technology, really in a lot of OT and IT fields. We see this in HVAC as well, for example, completely different, but just to paint that larger picture, network tech, hardware, and software, nowadays are coming equipped with a lot of intelligence. Right? We're talking edge intelligence, better data insights, automated, and proactive oversight baked into the hardware or the software in a way that it hadn't been ten, even five years ago, is this level of intelligence of added features for better insights, and even automation, is this helping network professionals provide regular maintenance of tech and systems to a an enhanced degree, or has it also come with its own operational challenges getting the workforce to understand some of these new systems and the insights that they provide I'm sure it's a little of both, but walk me through that dynamic and what you're seeing, you know, if if either of those options. Yeah. I I think it's helped, quite a bit. There's nothing more important than having, information at the hand of the person that needs it in real time. So they have the ability to have test equipment that can show you, the entire network, for example. I remember, you know, back in my cable days of being a field technician would go to a customer house, you know, I would have my signal level meter, and I, you know, I had the ability to check the signal, and then I had to troubleshoot from there. But like you mentioned, now those same test equipment, has a lot more features, a lot, remote monitoring and telemetry. Possibilities. And, so what happened is now a technician can, you know, look at an entire, network. So for example, not just that one customer that may be put to that, that service tab, but they can, you know, remote into software and look at everybody that feeding out of that, you know, optical node. And then, instantly, they can see, you know, is this a neighborhood issue, or is this just gonna be a single customer issue? And based on that, they're able to make a decision faster. You know, is this something that I can just fix myself at the subscriber's home do I need to contact, you know, a maintenance technician because it there appears to be, you know, a problem in the network But, you know, there's technicians and supervisors and managers, you know, they want to be able to look at the network in the area that they're responsible for. To make sound decision of, you know, sending the right person, for that job and not having to, you know, send one, person and then, you know, having to send a maintenance tech or a construction tech later. So, you know, And that is only because of, you know, these, edge equipment and devices having, more intelligence with it. But, you know, there's some challenges with that, which is, you know, the training side of it, you know, getting people to understand, like, you know, with this meter, you have all these options, and knowing, you know, which option to use for the particular, impairment. So that is addressed with training, and, but over time as they run into those issues, you know, day after day, just like anything, it becomes second nature to them. So let's get a little more into the training layer of this conversation. Right? Obviously a major part of making sure networks are well maintained and keep up with some of these, you know, market shifts industry shifts, continuous evolutions to technology, is to have well trained employees. Right? The linchpin of network reliability is obviously the pros that help keep those networks reliable. So I'm curious, you know, being a, you know, technical and training manager yourself, what are your thoughts on the importance of technical education and how critical is this for network reliability, both, or, you know, for, improving skills around troubleshooting and keeping networks up both for new entrants to the workforce, but also for vets. Right? Folks that have been in the workforce for a while. Give us your thoughts on the importance of this layer for overall network and reliability? I may be a little biased just because I've been in training for two decades now in the cable industry. But it's extremely important. And, you know, they're in the past, a lot of companies, you know, they view training as you know, a nice to have. You know, it wasn't perceived as a revenue generating department. So, you know, in the past, you know, training was kind of put on the back burner. But the message over the years that, you know, we put out is that, you know, although it may not be revenue generating, if you don't have a properly trained workforce, it could cost you a lot of money and, you know, repeats and, you know, poor services for our customers to the point where customers may leave. You know, our services and go to another provider. And being that you've been in the industry for twenty years or twenty years plus, I want to get some anecdotal stories here to help frame this in practice. Right, the benefit and utility of continued education and, fresh education, for new entrants in the field as well. So can you paint some examples pulling from your extensive experience and, you know, maybe literal, training moments from your career that really showcase what you've seen in terms of the value and benefit of, technically trained continuously trained network pro prose. Excuse me. Being able to better troubleshoot and make informed decisions in today's network tech ecosystem, what are your thoughts there? I remember when a company did I work for, we first launched Internet service. And I had the, my first training was to, get technician, to understand how to set up a cable modem and log into a computer and troubleshoot. What I learned was over the years was that, you know, physical stuff it's easier for people to learn how to do because they can look and see, hey, there's not a light on that device. It must be unplugged. You know, etcetera, the cable's not plugged in. But with internet, you know, we were introduced to, more logical troubleshooting. And so, we have to know teach technician, you know, what is an IP address? And how does having the wrong IP address or subnet mask can cause, a lack of connection, you know, on a network. Right? So because they couldn't put their hands on it, it was a lot harder for them to, you know, under stand the logical side of, you know, how data works. So, but as we did a lot more of that training, what I noticed over the years is that as we started to introduce other technologies, whether it was a voice over IP. Now we get into, you know, Docs' know, four dot four dot o. You know, we're currently doing Docu three dot one. And a lot of that stuff, even like with remote five. Where we're taking what used to be, information that was stored in the head end. And now we're pushing some of that those layers, you know, layer one and layer two of the OSI model out into the field, but it's more logical than, anything. And that's cool to hear, right, that there's somewhat of a domino effect, right, once you build that habit that, mentality and that strategy, really, for continuous education, each sort of further continued note of education gets a little simpler. It adds on, to an already existing pool of knowledge I'm curious though, you know, I imagine sometimes there's a major shift in the market in workflows and technologies, and available, you know, tools to help sort of, assess the health of a network. I'm curious if that poses any key challenges in keeping curriculum up with some of these evolutions. And could you break down for some of your strategies for curriculum development And now you make sure to match said curriculum to where the market's at and where you see it heading. Is that how do we have our curriculum have a, you know, longer shelf life but then also pointing, learners, you know, to where that document is housed. Another thing with that also is that when we point learners to where information is, it takes, it puts learning in their own hands So instead of a instructor in front of a classroom telling them, you know, this is the answer, and here's why, you know, we're we're we're pulling in from, you know, learning out of the individual in that case. And when you do that, what we've noticed over the years is that they get used to trying to go and find information, you know, whether it's on a training site or a process engineering site, So that way they're not dependent on the next time they're in a training class. You know, so, in which will, you know, you know, eventually, you know, build a culture of continuous, no education and, the, the desire to keep learning. And I want to hone in now on those learning strategies. Right? Because It's one thing to acknowledge that training is key and to implement it. But it's another to really bake it into the culture of organization, a company, you know, trade org, even, you know, a partnered trade school or something that helps facilitate some of this training and that hits on some of the distinct challenges in strategies for internal onboarding and internal continuous training versus external technical training. Can you discuss some of the benefits of both of those pools? Right, is one more effective than another? Do they need to complement each other? Kinda, what does that ecosystem look like in today's, larger sort of telecom industry? Yeah. Great question. You know, internal training, you know, there are some things that you want your, workforce to know and understand where there is no, deviation of that information, meaning, you know, for example, compliance related training. You know, it is our, that company's policy that, you know, you conduct yourself in a certain manner. Same thing with, you know, your internal specification, you know. We want to make sure that a particular device in the network has the appropriate signal level and voltage level. So our internal training team will make sure that our, you know, the workforce understands, you know, those, metrics and, that information But then there's times where, you know, you take external training, whether it's, so for example, like vendor. You have all this equipment in your network. Whether it's amplifiers or, you know, passive devices, optical nodes, etcetera, and, and different flavors of it. Well, no one is gonna be more of an expert than, the individual that make it. So that's where partnering with, you know, external, you know, entities such as vendors, can come into play and help you out, whereas your internal team can focus on you know, new hire training, making sure they understand, you know, HR policies and the company specs and, and, you know, procedures and policies. Whereas, we can leverage as an example vendors, to cover the new equipment that, you know, just showed up in the house. And hopefully that's not the first time they're aware of the, that there's a new equipment coming is when it shows up in a warehouse, but using, external entities and not even just them, but, committees, you know, that, create standards, you know, like STTE and Cisco, you know, leveraging them. So that way, you know, your trainer, can focus on internal you know, content, but then also they can, have time to build their skill set and they're not having to learn every type of possible device and how it works, you know, etcetera. So, both are necessary and, in the views, know, the right way can be, very effective. This is a layer of the topic that, you know, we see in most industries that especially have a tenured workforce, that have professionals who have really, you know, cut their teeth on the industry made a, you know, a name for themselves, planted their flag and have some pride in their existing skills. I imagine there might be some challenges in sort of the culture of desiring more skills, right, of kind of helping professionals understand that even if you are great at your job now, there's always something fresh to add to the pool so you can stay competitive in the market. Do you see any of those kinds of challenges? Right? Challenges around, setting a culture of education of continued education, setting a culture of prose desiring and understanding the importance of expanding their knowledge pools. And if you do see some of that, what are some strategies that you see and try yourself for fostering that cold of continuous learning in the industry? Yeah. Especially, like you mentioned with, you know, whether it's technicians or, you know, who have their employees or that's been there forever, you know, a lot of time, it comes down to, you know, how do you position them, more as a mentor role, versus just you know, another, you know, technician, and, for an example, and part of that is is, you know, like you mentioned, what the culture is is that, you know, as as as leaders in the company, I think we have to do a better job of, letting everyone in the company to see and understand the roadmap that, you know, senior leadership, and engineering, etcetera, has, kind of define for the company. So, you know, what, you know, what will your company look like, say, a year from now or three years from now? And don't wait until we're getting ready to launch, you know, a new architecture or initiative, say, like, five or ten to the home. You know, we wanna start kind of planning to see that, hey, here's where our company is now. Here's where we're going. And when you do that, you know, people that's been in the industry a long time, we have the ability to meet people where they are. You know, nowadays people are on their mobile devices. So we don't want to only design training for the classroom we wanna make sure that, you know, if they're always on their mobile phone, then that's where, you know, we as a company, that's where we as a training organization, because we're competing with people's attention. And if their attention is on their mobile device, we need to be there. If they're watching videos, we need to be in that format. And if we can do those things, then, you know, those, you know, veteran employees that's been there a long time you know, they're more, out to, you know, to join in and embrace, you know, continue their education. So Alright, Charles. We're just about done with the conversation. Thank you for your perspective so far today, sharing all of your on the ground experiences and, you know, your strategies for successfully implementing continued technical education for network pros. I'm curious, now as we wrap up looking ahead, where you see this landscape continuing to evolve, whether that's the larger, you know, telecom market or the technologies around it or even just more specifically the future of technical education within that evolving landscape. What do you see as the future based on how the industry is continuing to evolve and any final thoughts here for our audience? There's a lot of smart people all over the world. And, you know, they're, one thing about trainers they love to share information. So, it's not hard to get information out of them, but how do we scale training. And also, and, and, you know, one way of doing that is not, you know, keep it in a box. And and think that it has to be a real person in real time. It could be videos. It could be animation. And it could be virtual reality. So, if you build it, they will come. And I am an advocate of, like, new things, thinking outside of the box, and learning. And I wanna leave with this note, is that, you know, for those that, you know, embrace, training and learning, but even the ones that are hesitant because, you know, they felt like you know, at school, you know, I was never, you know, book smart, etcetera. You know, when I first became a trainer, a mentor, taught me early on. He said, the first rule of being a trainer is you'll never know everything. And as soon as you understand that, you're going to be great. So what you wanna do is figure out how do I find information. And that's what we wanna do for our, you know, workforce is have information that they can access, at any time and know where to find it. And then when we need to, you know, gather them for you know, hands on training and instructor led training, you know, we can, you know, make time for that. So Alright. Well, I think on that note, Charles, we'll go ahead and wrap up the conversation. So, Charles, thank you so much for your time today on the show. Again, for digging into what you've seen as the benefits of continued and new technical education for network professionals, and some strategies for implementing those thoughtfully, whether internally you're partnering with external entities to help make it happen. Again, folks, we've been chatting with Charles Dillard training manager for amphenol Broadband solutions. Charles, if folks wanna find out a little bit more about how ABS is supporting this ecosystem of training, maybe learn from you, maybe get in touch, where should we point them? Yes. Thanks, Daniel. They can go to, you know, our site, amphenolbroadband.com. We're on YouTube. LinkedIn. You know, we're putting out a lot of content, a lot of fiber-related content, videos, etcetera. So or they can reach me at c dillard at a b s dash go dot com. Fantastic. Easy enough. Alright, Charles. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate you again joining us and sharing your perspectives with our audience. I'm sure they found it useful and strategic. So much appreciated will obviously be chatting again soon. Thank you again. Thanks, Daniel. And thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of Wavelength. An amphenol Broadband Solutions podcast. If you like what you heard and saw today and you wanna tap into previous perspectives or wanna make sure you don't miss out on future conversations on the show. Make sure that you're heading to our website, amphenolbroadband.com. Again, amphenolbroadband.com, and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'm your host Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B will catch you on the next episode of Wavelengths.