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Training mediums include:
Training moment/tip of the day – incorporate into your weekly team meeting. Ask before each meeting if anyone learned anything that they thought was neat that week about the new technology that they’d like to share with the group. Just in case, have something on hand to share with the group.
Hands-on – too often, this is the only form of training that employees think will be effective and too much money is spent developing courses or sending people out to this type of training. Just as effective is an online seminar where attendees can practice on another screen as they are being taught. Training doesn’t mean that people have to leave their PC unless they are in a job role where they will be constantly interrupted.
Tip sheet – this is just as effective as hands-on training if you follow up a demo with a tip sheet with step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish the tasks performed. It allows you to cover more material in less time and people only follow up with the tips that were the most relevant to them.
For more information on different types of training and the effort involved to hire someone to develop each one,
refer to this archived blog entry on the ROI of tip sheets, scripted hands-off demos, CBT’s, and training manuals. Define training objectives and don’t focus all your money on training one single department. Instead, try to get all your end users to a baseline of competency.
Audiences and how they learn
Admin pros = hands-on learning, tip sheet or training manual
Don’t hesitate to customize existing training courses from other companies to suit their needs. This is the audience that doesn’t call the service desk, don’t feel they have the time to do CBT’s, and they need the time and attention of a live person to feel as if they have been trained. The good news is that they typically learn quickly – once they watch it and do it and take notes, they are good to go. If your business relies on administrative professionals, then hands-on learning is going to be expensive but it will be worth it.
SharePoint Admin = hands-on learning
Don’t train all admins on SharePoint administration – only the ones who will be engaged as a SharePoint administrator. This audience will also include IT people. Chances are you are going to have to develop custom training if you branded your environment or incorporated third-party web parts. Take this audience through the ‘why’ the company is transitioning to new technology as much as the steps to take to create and maintain a site. Have a style guide ready. Unless their entire job is going to be site administration, do not give them all the possible ways to do something. Teach them the one right way that you want them to create a library (metadata not folders, for example). Show them lots of examples and give them a sandbox they can continue to use after the event to test new concepts and web parts prior to rolling out to their own site.
Support = people who answer a lot of questions that people ask them. May not be considered ‘help desk.’ These are typically your tech savvy individuals, business analysts, consultants, and subject matter experts.
Empower this group via relationship learning. You can’t take them away from their job for an entire day because too many people rely on them, but you can publish blogs, create a best practices wiki, and give them access to add issues to an FAQ list. If you have to meet with them, then break up six hours of content over three days - two hours at a time. Mornings are better and spread it over two or three days – not two or three weeks. Follow up with a reference book with a good index.
By business process – teach one thing to the entire group (ex., audit, accounting) – here’s the integration point with your specific software. Pick one task, one activity – get the whole group together. You have to take the entire group offline to do this, so it’s a tough buy in. CBT and Video work well in this space. Process groups typically have to take other required CBT’s. Spend the money to customize and make as relevant and interactive as possible. Work with vendors to get emulators.
Business Analysts – They should attend everything but they learn best from documentation. Books are best for them. Don’t write a book for them – it costs too much money and takes too long to do that. Work with your book vendor and Microsoft rep to find a book that’s already out there.
IT – they write books but not a good audience for books. They have the books on their shelf but they are just using as reference. They learn socially. Give them a list of resource links on the internet and distribute to them as an RSS feed or Summary Links web part grouped by topic. MSDN subscriptions are not wasted on this group and they should be encouraged to join the SharePoint Twitter community. Send them to the five-day long boot camps and SharePoint conferences. It’s worth it.
Project Managers – they want their whole project team to be there and they want a discussion, not training. They love meetings. Don’t force a project management group into hands-on learning. Seminar-style works well. Engage them in the solution. Here’s what we think, will that work for your group? Gives you an opportunity to find integration points. Not just IT project teams – all project teams are focused on one task, so the rest of the implementation doesn’t matter to them. Think lean, don’t waste their time. Make the 6 hr course into 90 min PowerPoint presentation and be prepared to take notes and come away with challenges that they need solutions to.
Executives – one-on-one – 15-20 mins in their office, at their desk. Teach them how to approve a workflow. Admin sends it, Executive gets the email, clicks on the link, opens the document, then approves – all you need to teach them is where to click to approve. This is very resource consuming but very important because you have to get their buy in – so they can go to their managers and be a champion. Hands-on in tandem with their admin is the only way you are going to reach this audience.