Episode 10: Training and Mentorship

Professional development. Upskilling. Training. Mentorship. Whatever you call it, it all adds up to growing the abilities of workers and investing in a talented workforce, which in turn means investing in your business or organization.

We all seem to agree it’s important, so why can it be so challenging to make it a priority? According to Pew Research, in 2024, only 51% of employed adults polled said they have taken a class or gotten extra training in the past year. At ITS, we recognize this challenge and address it by focusing on developing skills and fostering collaboration through a variety of outlets and avenues.

One exceptional example of training and skill building includes a dedicated mentorship program, which pairs an employee at an earlier stage of their career with someone who has been with the industry or the organization for a longer period of time. 

On today’s episode, Director of Training Ariel Shatsoff and Training Specialist Heather Cook talk about the importance of training, as well as how the ITS Mentorship Program has helped an agency on the rise prepare its workforce for the future.

Thank you for listening to the IT’S a Tech Podcast. For more information about ITS, visit our website at its.ny.gov. Follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

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You're listening to the IT'S a Tech podcast, an engaging conversation about the game-changing technology solutions being advanced by the state's Office of Information Technology Services. Learn how ITS makes IT happen for more than 50 state agencies and over 20 million New Yorkers. Professional development. Upskilling. Training. Mentorship. Whatever you call it, it all adds up to growing the abilities of workers and investing in a talented workforce, which in turn means investing in your business or organization. We all seem to agree it's important, so why can it be so challenging to make it a priority? According to Pew Research, in 2024, only 51% of employed adults polled said they have taken a class or gotten extra training in the past year. At ITS, we recognize this challenge and address it by focusing on developing skills and fostering collaboration through a variety of outlets and avenues. One exceptional example of training and skill-building includes a dedicated mentorship program, which pairs an employee with someone who has been with the industry or the organization for a longer period of time. On today's episode, Director of Training Ariel Shatsoff and Training Specialist Heather Cook talk about the importance of training, as well as how the ITS mentorship program has helped an agency on the rise prepare its workforce for the future. Ariel, Heather, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we get into the nitty gritty of the topic, tell us more about you and how you found yourselves in your current roles at ITS. So like you said, my name is Ariel Shatsoff and I started with the State back in 2006 with the Department of Taxation and Finance. I took the correct professional careers test and you may know that fills many positions, but I ended up into the training office and I didn't know it then, but I found out it was the right career for me. A commissioner once told me that the state's really great at hiring people and promoting people that are good at their current jobs but have no idea how to do the other parts of their jobs. So helping people develop the skills they need for higher level roles like communication, supervision, leadership, working together, providing feedback, those are the things people really need to be successful. So that's become a passion of mine and... help people develop the skills that go beyond their resume. So you're pro professional development? I am pro professional development, which is great because in 2015 I then moved to OPWDD where I oversaw their professional development program. And what I learned there really is with vastly different jobs from tax and finance to OPWDD, all those essential skills are really the same or very similar. The communication, the leadership, the teamwork. Then in 2022, I learned that ITS was reforming their training office. Indeed. And yeah, that was a great opportunity because I get to build it from scratch. Yeah, exactly. Make it. Make it what you want it to be, right? The ground up. I was able to help pick my team and the direction of the training office to help ITS meet its needs, which is different than the other agencies because it supports many agencies and New Yorkers. So the impact is very broad. And that's bringing me to where I am today. Fantastic. Heather, how about you? Yeah, thanks for having me. So my background is actually in teaching. I was a high school English teacher before I made the move to State service. I was looking for a role that offered a better work life balance, especially as I was thinking about starting a family, and the training specialist position at ITS felt like a perfect fit. I've been with ITS about 2 1/2 years now and it has actually been a really nice transition. I still get to use a lot of the same skills that I loved about teaching, getting to work with people and kind of be a part of that development and growth, but just in a different setting. I love that. As a former English major, thank... Thank you for your service. Thank you. So professional development as we've established is very important. We can all agree it's... this is not a controversial statement, but it seems to be so daunting for many businesses and organizations to launch a successful program around training. Why do you think that is and how did ITS overcome this obstacle? Yeah, why is that? I agree. Why is that? Many organizations do struggle in implementing successful training programs, I think it's because it can be overwhelming designing programs to meet diverse needs and different learning styles. Oftentimes training is considered a cost instead of a benefit. So it's, you know, an expense. And we try to help people see the investment, you know, spend time training now so that you have it in the future. But that's hard for people to see when they're taking people out of jobs to go to training or professional development. Plus here at ITS and at even at the other agencies I worked at, laws change, trends change, technologies change. So it's always evolving. It's not like you can just hit a groove because you're always trying to keep up with, you know, the times. Absolutely. It's it's a moving target, right? I would agree with that. So we're talking about training in broad strokes, but let's drill down and talk about the ITS training curriculum overall and also including the mentorship program. How did everything come about and how has the program grown since its inception? So, when I came to ITS, I realized we had to, like we said, build from the ground up. So identifying those essential skills that people needed, the current technologies and trends that everyone was looking for, and then figure out how to match relevant and accessible training opportunities to meet those needs. So we developed a supervisory development program, which helped reinforce the skills people already had, but also help people develop new skills. Also, staying current with best practices and trying to align the supervisory program with the agency's needs. Additionally, there were some technologies people were looking for right away. One that we were able to meet immediately working with the unions actually was a Python training. It was a full week training that was well received and actually became a program that's been offered multiple times since then, both for ITS and other agencies. Some other things we learned were... there's a lot of legacy systems that are used to support agencies like mainframes, and newer hires are not familiar with some of the older technologies. So trying to address those skill gaps was a big thing. So we found ways to... different resources to help meet those needs. But really learning overall that ITS is spread all over the place and there are many, many technologies. So we started revisiting all our existing resources like Empire Knowledge Bank or EKB that people may be familiar with. And as people were talking about AI and machine learning, we had resources, people didn't know about them. So trying to match those with the employees to the resources and letting people know what's out there so they can go find it 'cause they know better than I do was a big part of our initial success because people didn't even know. So we didn't really have to purchase anything or put anything new except show people where to find it. Right. Making it accessible for everyone. Absolutely. All right. Yeah. And then the mentoring program, it actually does predate our current training team. However, we did relaunch it in 2023 and we really went into it when designing it around the idea that everyone can be a leader. By embracing this idea, we really work to match employees to work together, to share their experiences, to help navigate work projects and career mobility as a part of our driving force behind the development. And this helps to really provide a resource outside of people's normal supervisory chains to be able to bounce ideas and to get feedback and to help meet personal goals. I think one of the things that people may not realize that's really unique about our program is its flexibility. So we intentionally keep the program unstructured and we allow participants to really design and work the program however best meets both their needs and their goals. Make it their own. So yeah, exactly. So we don't have structured you have to meet every week at this time or X amount of times a month. Participants can decide how often they meet, when they meet, and the format in which they have those conversations, whether it be in person, over Webex, Teams, whatever best meets their needs. We also have a matching preferences section on the application. So this really allows participants to personalize the program to what they hope to get out of it and it really allows us to match people with someone who will best guide them on that journey. We include a section where they can rank their desired skill and knowledge preferences for the program, whether it be things like career planning, navigating supervisor peer relationships, developing leadership skills, communication skills. There's really something for everyone to get the most out of the mentoring relationship. And since relaunching, we've really seen it grow, not just in numbers, but in the depth of the relationships that are being formed. And we find it really exciting to get to kind of just sit back and watch these relationships form and to continue to allow participants to shape the program to fit their own developmental journey to grow both professionally and personally. Absolutely. I personally can attest that the mentorship program was very helpful for me both as a mentor and as a mentee, especially I came from the private sector and having a mentor during my first year really helped me find my feet, so to speak, in state government. And I agree with you, the flexibility of the program, like we were able to, you know, meet at our on our own time and, you know, we developed a relationship that lasts to this day. So, you know, a slight bias in bringing you on today, but... So besides mine, do you have any specific success stories that came out of the mentorship program that you can share? Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that you got meaningful lasting relationships out of the program. And I think one of the main things that we've seen that you just mentioned is that you really can help people to find their feet, so to speak, whether it be with state service, if they're brand new to New York State or with ITS as an agency. We've had a lot of participants talk about how valuable it is just to have someone that they can go to for guidance. It's not this formal sitting down and speaking with a supervisor or, you know, someone higher up or necessarily even talking about work, but getting to have someone there as a guide to go through different challenges, whether it be in the workplace or personally with that work/life balance that most people struggle with. We, yeah, we've really just had a lot of different good stories come out of it. Like I said, if they're navigating something new, whether it be a different role, a new team or just learning how things work in state government. And we've had mentors tell us that they benefit just as much. Some mentors have talked about at our end of program celebration that we have, they've talked about that it helps them to kind of, you know, stay current, especially if you've been in your role for really long time. I think you might forget what it's like to be a newer employee or just newer to state service in general. It can be really rewarding to help employees navigate their first few months and helping them to become a part of the ITS community. And others have talked about supporting mentees with their career goals, whether it be preparing for a leadership role or like I mentioned earlier, things like even just strengthening their communication skills can really help people in numerous ways. And I think you also mentioned a lot of these relationships continue to grow after the program. And so people keep in touch, they check in on each other's progress, and it really allows them to celebrate their wins together. And for us, it's just encouraging to see how these partnerships can spark both personal and professional growth. Absolutely. I think for us also it's the mentoring program and all of our trainings. Talking to people is helpful because we're always looking to expand our catalog of trainings, help people meet their needs. So we hear about those things like communication or writing or reporting or even technologies people want to get into, whether it's like cloud or AI or cybersecurity. And we have to find those resources continue to develop our training catalog to help meet those needs and the mentoring program and our in-person trainings, especially I think help us, you know, find... find those new opportunities. And we do have some, you know, things in the pipeline to come down. Hopefully that will help develop, continue to develop people's what I like to call essential skills. People call them other things, but I call them essential skills because we all need to be able to communicate and provide feedback and learn from each other, which the mentoring program helps do certainly. But also some of the, you know, those more technical skills like I said, like the cloud computing or AI or cybersecurity, those kinds of things. Absolutely. Well, sounds like a good segue to my next

question is: 14:28

what is on the horizon for the mentorship program and for the training team in general? Yeah, so we do have a lot of exciting things coming up. Our next round of the mentoring program actually officially launches this Friday, November 7th, announcing it here first. It's an exclusive. Yeah, it's an exclusive drop for for you all. Our applications will open this Friday and they're going to run this time until December 5th. So we are going to have a longer application process this time. It's been a little bit shorter in the past, but we've had growing interest. So we want to keep that open to allow more people to join. And then we'll start the program up in January 2026. And on the training side, I'm sure Ariel has a lot to add, but we are going to also be revamping our supervisory development program for 2026. We've gathered feedback from past participants and we're kind of using that feedback to tailor the program to better fit the evolving needs of both supervisors and leaders here at ITS. And one last thing on that note is one of the biggest changes we've just made is that we have opened the supervisory development program up to all employees. It used to only be open to current supervisors, but this way, anyone who's interested in growing their leadership skills can start developing those skills and building that foundation early. And yeah, I think it's just a really exciting time for our team. I'll let you speak of the more training side. I did talk a lot about the things that we're trying to get into, but I think, you know, the sky's the limit. As you know, ITS is always changing to meet agency needs. I think we've gone through some big organizational changes recently and the focus of how the agency does business I think has changed. So things like product management and product ownership are new, I think, to a lot of ITS employees. I think we talked a lot about project management in the past and moving to product management is a different way to think about the work. So it's, you know, we have experts in technologies, but it's how do we sell it so that ITS and New Yorkers benefit at efficient, repeatable, hopefully solutions. So our job is not to come up with the solutions, but help, you know, our managers and leaders to be able to develop those relationships with other agencies, to bring the technologies to them. Right, set them up for success. Set them up for success. Exactly. What advice would you give to our listeners who are interested in growing their professional skills but haven't found an approach that works for them? So to me, the biggest thing I would say, and I'm sure you will appreciate this, is we recommend people to go to the new Inside Edge page. We have a training page out there. It's got a calendar that has all of our live trainings, whether they're webinars or in person. Some are required, but it also has the supervisory training that Heather was talking about before. But besides that, we have tons of other resources available. I mentioned EKB before, but we also have Google trainings, Microsoft trainings, Cisco trainings. We have lots of lots of different available resources that have both live, on-demand... mix of different learning styles. There's books available. So anything that however someone learns, there's probably training out there on a topic that someone wants to learn about. And if not, it also tells you how to contact us so that we can help a lot get you to and you know, get you pointed to the right resources. Additionally, I think if people really want to care about their development, there's tuition reimbursement, certification reimbursement programs that are out there that we have all linked on our Inside Edge page. Open to ITS employees, to clarify. I apologize. Yes, that would be internal to us. But I'm sure similar resources will exist in other state agencies as well, especially those reimbursement programs I talked about. But there's other resources that we talked about that are available as well. Absolutely. And you know, look at your organization, your, your business. There may be resources there that you don't even know exist. So for those of you outside the state organization, just put your feelers out, find find what works for you and what's in your sphere of influence. But I'm sure Heather has other ideas as well. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the same things as what Ariel said, just to kind of always stay curious. I think we're all lifelong learners. I may be biased because I was a teacher, but I think everyone can benefit from professional development and you don't have to jump into a huge program or commitment right away. Like Ariel just mentioned, we have a lot of different trainings. Percipio offers shorter training so really you can start with something simple and you could even do something like ask a coworker or supervisor for feedback. You can shadow someone whose work you admire or just pick on one skill that you want to focus on over the next few months. I know you also mentioned everyone is a different type of learner and I know myself and a lot of my colleagues, that's how we approach training is recognizing that there are multiple ways of learning and everybody learns at different rates and in you know, different styles. So if you haven't been to one of our in person trainings, just. You know, I want to plug ourselves that we don't lecture people during these. It's not like you have to come and sit and we're just going to talk at you for a couple of hours. I think the great thing about the training here is that it is more of a group discussion. We just act as facilitators, which is why I love it. I've gotten to see a lot of great conversations between supervisors and leaders and just employees in general, where people kind of get to bounce ideas off one another, but also realize that, you know what, something that they struggle with, maybe someone else has dealt with that before. They can give advice. Yeah. So I just to plug us. I think that everyone can benefit from attending and you may learn something that you didn't even realize that you wanted to learn. Absolutely. Even training the classes, I feel like I learn. Every time I'm in the class, learning from the different participants because every situation's different. Every person's different. So you learn different ways to handle situations that you wouldn't have come up with on your own. Absolutely. I will add one more on top of all of that. Just set, set aside the time. Yeah. Put it on your calendar. If there's a live training, put that training on your calendar and you are going. It is, it is a thing that is happening. If you make it a priority, you will make it happen. So we unfortunately are almost out of time for this episode. But before you both go, I have one final request that I make of all of our guests. Tell our listeners about anything you're looking forward to in the near future, work related or not. So I, I think it's a as work related, I find it a difficult question because like I said, everything is always evolving and changing here. So what I think is going to be in the future might change 5 minutes from now, but I think what we're trying to do, which I find exciting, is we're trying to bring more of those technical trainings in-house, ways to, you know, get everyone up to speed on the same page and in alignment with ITS's mission on those things I talked about whether it's AI or cloud computing, but also the accessibility of our leadership is super important. And we're hoping to help facilitate that through a series of town halls that another right that employees will be able to attend and hear directly from our leadership on the direction or our organizational structure, those things. Why did we make the decisions that we make? So to me it's hard because something on the horizon personally would be hard to say because I'm trying to take it as it comes and and bring these resources to to everybody here and help people stay current. Perfect answer, Heather, I'm gonna go with the mentoring program which launches this Friday, November 7th. Remember Mark the date? Yeah, plugging our program. And I did mean to say before with the mentoring program that I think is important. We get this question a lot is can I be a mentor of I've never been a mentor before? And yes, you can. It's something I want to plug before we go, just that we always need more mentors for this program. I think people will be surprised at the amount of applicants we get that want to be mentored. But unfortunately we don't usually get enough mentors to be able to match everybody. So before we go, I do just want to really hone in on our listeners that everyone has something to offer. You don't have to be in a leadership role or supervisory role. Even. We've had people that are newer to the state to everyone brings different things with them as a mentor. So don't feel like you're not equipped to be a mentor. Definitely apply if you feel like you are able to provide that guidance and support. It's something that we're really hoping this year to get more mentors to apply so that the program can continue to grow. Yeah. So I think that's professionally what I'm looking forward to the most. I love that for non ITS users, I know a lot of agencies have mentoring programs. I did work on a committee a few years ago that was a statewide trying to bring mentoring to more agencies. So you might have one that you don't know about. And I think it's a great way to learn from each other. Like Heather said, a mentor doesn't necessarily have to be older or be with the state for as long. It's based on your experience and what you can share with others to help others develop. So, you know, check and maybe you can make one happen in your agency if it doesn't already exist, Agency or business or organization, Talk to your HR. You might already have one. But if you don't, maybe see if there's interest and you want to get one started, then that'll be exciting on their horizon. Exactly. A lot of great things for 2026. Well, Ariel, Heather, thank you both so much for sharing your insights about training and mentorship here at ITS. And just in general, we are all looking forward to developing our professional skill set in the near future. Thank you again, thank you for listening to It's a Tech Podcast. For more information about ITS, visit ourwebsite@its.ny.gov.