1

Hey guys,

Thought I would brainstorm a little with my fellow IT guys.

I noticed a lot of our helpdesk tickets in our company are more “lack of training” related than anything else.

In an effort to be more proactive, I was curious, how does everyone here handle IT training? I personally would love to have little IT training classes on a regular basis, but I doubt anyone would appear. Last time we did a major IT overhaul (Upgrading office, introducing Office 365 tools) two people showed up. the problem is, then no one knows how to use the tools so they get under utilized, which defeats the whole purpose of the products we purchase.

Does your company do regular IT training? Do you just throw docs up on the intranet and hope people just read them? Curious what you guys do to assist in this.

50 Spice ups
2

Very mixed uptakes with general sessions from my experience. It’s a big investment in the time of the users and staff facilitating the session, so it’s usually going to be for a fairly good reason.

Whenever a need for reasonable training can be locally identified, my usual plan is to identify the key stakeholders in the relevant department(s), organize a time with them, and get them to communicate within their workgroups that the session is on. The business needs to be the ones driving attendance, not IT.

7 Spice ups
3

Unfortunately, I think your experience is pretty typical. For our tech upgrades, I have started writing up how-to guides (with pretty pictures) and printing them out. I hand everyone a copy AND send them a copy via email. I then make myself available for one-on-one sessions for those that want to learn beyond the basics. Fortunately, I only have about 50 users, so I can schedule my time pretty flexibly.

I tried hands-on sessions and no one showed, so I took the targeted individual approach. After the new tech is installed and has been running for a week, I walk around and ask how people are doing and if there are any pointers they would like. It’s at this point that I do most of my training as almost everyone says, “Actually, how do I do this and this?”. It’s not efficient, but it gets the job done.

8 Spice ups
4

I’m building an IT Orientation for new employees, but until then I create and push out knowlege base articles. They go on the sharepoint.

5

It works the opposite for us, where we did initially train on SharePoint (how to use the product) and the members can only attend the training after saying they want to and getting approval for an hour or so from their manager, the training and help ‘workshops’ have been a big success and more have been requested, generally for Office products, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, OneNote and so on, but the feedback has been good.

The sessions are not long each so only an hour for each one, and they are held a few times a week so those that missed one can turn up on another date - some people have been a few times to the same one.

Many training sessions are also recorded as on screen presentations and overlaid with a microphone, so people have the option of watching them over from our intranet.

We do have a set of people who do the training on specific products, more of the general ones all staff have some use with.

Things like IF statements and Pivot tables has had some good feedback. Even basics such as formatting in word, styles and the basic things people don’t know about

It really depends on the product, the target audience and how the training, tutorial or presentation is done, but the online videos showing people the basics has been given good feedback so far as has the workshops.

1 Spice up
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Forgot to mention, training on Lync has been good to, how to share your desktop/application.

How to transfer a call, start a video call or setup call forwarding.

As basic as these sound, its a starting point and people like these types of free helpings.

1 Spice up
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I am the help desk manager/Trainer for my company. Everyone who comes in sits down with me for a day and learns how we utilize our system. Mainly how to use our Document Management software with Word, Outlook, etc. This cuts down on so many tickets it is unbelievable.

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We use to take the power users (typically a Supervisor) from each department and train them well in whatever application we have using. Nothing to in depth tech wise, but more so the functionality. An example would be setting an out of office on Outlook. Instead of the users calling the Helpdesk line saying “How do I do my out of office?”, which means we create a ticket, log our time, etc… the Supervisor can train them how to do it instead.

If you’re in a small department, I mean who cares… but when you support 3k+ people and you get 5-10 people a week “uh, how do this this…” it gets annoying. For the example I provided, yes you can do a “how to” document but people tend to not read/understand things…

2 Spice ups
9

While we don’t get much opportunity for “ongoing” training for the most part, anytime we’ve launched a new line of business app, or introduce any new software into the company, we set aside time for small groups to attend training. (This is after we’ve had it in testing for at least a short time ourselves of course.) We also keep a running “Procedures” folder on the share where users can access XYZ for either refresher info or basically a hand written tutorial. Some are very good about using (in fact at my current place of work they’re very good about trying that route first). There’s a few who seem to dislike the written version though or maybe only process things well enough verbally and come to us for extra assistance - it’s never an issue.

In addition, there have been a couple times we’ve purchased (or had designed) something a bit larger and as part of the agreement, training is included (and I’m sure many do this whenever possible).

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Were a bad example, but yea, I have documents out on the file server that are “How-to’s” people can read when they want. No formal training at all.

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Training to help people be more effective at their jobs is the responsibility of managers and HR.

The only exception is that when you roll out a new system or an update to an existing system, IT may provide users with training materials.

4 Spice ups
12

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much…wait for it…ON THE FLY!

1 Spice up
13

I’d leave the training to management, as ITSlave mentioned.

You can invest some time into a solution base for common issues, but the majority of users won’t understand how to perform even the most basic of tasks - even after you’ve shown them 100 times.

@itslave

5 Spice ups
14

For major product updates (i.e. your 365 example), training should be mandatory and set from a management level. These are products your business is using, and therefore the staff need to be up to speed, otherwise there’s no point in them being there. Any new job openings will list 365 management as a desired or required skillset, so why are your own employees exempt?

I’ve handled training primarily from documentation tailored to the position. For example, a level 1 guy is only going to need to know certain things to perform his/her duties, and then escalate to a higher level tech, so there’s no point in dumping a ton of info on them that is meaningless to their job role. I write stuff out to be as clear and comprehensible as possible in order for them to feel confident in fulfilling their responsibilities and eliminate lower level issues before a level 2 guy gets his hands on it.

From a higher level perspective though, it is up to the individual to keep their education ongoing. Some companies require this to keep a position, but most do not. Self-education is necessary in this industry, and those who refuse don’t last very long (or at least become stagnant at their job role and do not move up).

So, my advice to the OP is to prioritize your topics. Get management to dictate the necessary training meetings as mandatory, and then see if you can get higher participation in your voluntary workshops by doing something like a lunch meeting presentation or a reward system. I’m not sure if your company does performance bonuses or other reward system, but that might work as well. A $50 Amazon card for making every training for that quarter would be an example.

1 Spice up
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I usually hold the training at each department. Going to their location provides a better turn out than them coming to me. I also record the first training session, put it on YouTube as a private video and post the link on our Intranet.

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Since everything rises and falls on leadership, the very top needs to be your biggest cheerleader. People will rise to the expectation but sometimes need some motivation. We currently have a LMS in place and we are developing our own knowledgebase to help with turnover and training needs for particular jobs. End-users have the ability to record their processes on their computer and make a video to post on the company intranet. If you can be salty enough for people to want to learn more to do better for themselves and the company, it’s a win-win. A friend of mine told me that good business should be good for everyone. I agree and think that leaders in companies need to kick it up a notch!

1 Spice up
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No we don’t but… I try to send out tips and other info at least once a week. Keeping it to the point so it doesn’t just get deleted.

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Be self employed I try and keep up with new techniques and equipment, I work only on network equipments, firewalls etc. I go to all the usual Epxo’s (InfoSec, IPExpo etc.), and do various training course, my current favourites being SANS, although I’ve done lots with Fast Lane ( http://www.flane.co.uk/ ) , Cisco ISE, Wireshark, Juniper, Cisco Nexus etc. All their tutors, like with SANS actually are consultants and still get out in the field, unlike other places where the tutors are just teachers.

I also spend an silly amount of spare time on GNS3 ( http://www.gns3.com/ ) testing theories, I’ve even designed the concepts for a few customer networks using GNS3 so that the cost of buying a full replica pre-production environment.

And other resources I use are CBT Nuggets ( http://www.cbtnuggets.com/ ), an amazing collection of videos, I use it for helping with certification attempts, as a reminder for things and configurations I’ve not used in a while and as you get access to everything they do, I often find myself watching other technologies and things, the MS Excel series has been handy, as has the Powershell videos. I’ve also used them at customer sites to get a grip on issues I come across, especially with servers, VMs etc. Definitely worth the subscription fee.

One other resource that has been useful is Cybrary ( http://www.cybrary.it/ ), it’s free and has some great video series on them.

When I go into company and I see a lack of motivation or maybe it’s just a lack of enthusiasm, I also ask managers why they don’t invest in their staff. The main reason is that they fear that if the staff are trained up they might leave and this investment in them is therefore a risk they won’t take.

I always reply to this with, what if you don’t invest in and train your staff and they don’t leave?

1 Spice up
19

Like many fellow Spiceheads have mentioned already, buy-in from management is usually key in people learning. We are lucky here at my company because our CEO and his right hand man trust us just about 100% with purchasing decisions. But we do usually have to do ROI proposals for them, and this is what we’ve done:

Talk to the powers that approved the purchase of the software/hardware. Explain to them that they are not going to see the full ROI (if any) on their investment because people aren’t giving the little effort needed to attend you training sessions and learn it. What good is a brand new expensive tool that the owner doesn’t know how to operate? It is good to integrate this with your initial proposal if you can, because inevitably it might make you feel like a tattle-tail if you have to tell your boss that other people aren’t doing something right. But I think that at the end of the day, making sure the company is getting an ROI (be it increased revenue or decreased costs) on its computer infrastructure is part of your job. Its weird, but something in my gut leads me to assume that wasting money doesn’t sit well with most managers :slight_smile:

Hopefully this helps.

Cheers!

-Dylan

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Any important training is mandatory. That said, honestly, i’m a lot more positive on training if the users are at least a little computer literate… or at least take notes… or at least read their notes before asking me the same question and then complaining to management that they haven’t been properly trained… or look in the local kb articles i wrote before asking me the same question… or just rtfm it took me 2 hours to write after training instead of asking me… or watch the very instructive youtube video i made instead of asking me the same f@cking questions over and over…

i’ve put a lock on my office door…

…so i can close it and cry.

5 Spice ups