So many companies have mandatory training policies that say that every employee is supposed to complete a certain number of hours of training each year and then they put production and sales goals in direct opposition by demanding that people work longer hours to make their quotas. Do not set your people up for failure by wasting money on training programs that you don’t mean. Take a good hard look at your training strategy and see if you aren’t holding organizational development classes that no one is attending because your middle management isn't making employees feel like it's okay to go. Why do you think Lunch and Learns have become so popular? And by the way, how come it’s okay for us to expect people to work through lunch now? In my opinion, what a company really needs to make their people more productive is mandatory lunches (and possibly nap time), but we'll start small with five training days each year.
When your people do put their foot down and insist that they need to be in a training class, don’t be the passive-aggressive boss that pages them every five minutes saying that you forgot they were in training today. Instead, be the boss that tells your administrative professional to take at least one day while you’re on vacation to attend on off-site training class. Work your way up to attending a class on productivity and time management with them to maximize the benefit of the message. I hear it all the time from users that the tips would be more effective if their boss would do it too. Better yet, attend a SharePoint Boot Camp together.
I am excited to see the increasing popularity of the boot camp concept. Take a couple of consecutive days to teach all the concepts in an application instead of dragging the details out over months of fundamentals, intermediate, and advanced courses. I remember when I worked for an open-enrollment, single application training company and my users would always be upset to find out that they had signed up for the wrong class. They came to the intermediate class to learn something that was taught in the advanced class or worse, based on what they were trying to do, they really needed a course on databases and not one on spreadsheets. They were upset because it took them months to convince their boss to come to training and now they weren’t even going to get what they came for. Over the years, people who went to training decided that there was little value in attending.
So, when employees aren’t attending the training that is being offered, the answer isn’t to fire the corporate trainer and turn the training room into a conference room. The answer is to make an organizational commitment to a well-balanced list of offerings that combines custom, scenario-based and hands-on training methods. If you’re going to take a whole day to train them, then you better teach them an end-to-end solution or workflow and not just focus on one application. Teach them how to create a meeting in Outlook, how to connect it to a SharePoint Meeting Workspace, and how to conduct the Live Meeting. Don't just show them Outlook - it's not a total solution to their meeting problem.
Lastly, we have got to collectively decide that we are going to break the cycle of making people figure things out on their own. If you want to retain talent and increase job satisfaction, then tuition reimbursement and paying for technology certifications is only one piece of the puzzle. Most companies stopped those programs when they saw good people come in for that benefit alone and then leave within one year of receiving their diploma or certificate. In order to make those programs succeed, you must balance them with a number of knowledge management strategies. Why would they want to stay with a company that trains them and then doesn’t allow them to use their new skills? Time their education with other corporate initiatives so that training is relevant and just in time. Work with your IT Department and Law Organization to roll out a communication plan in tandem with training so that it is clear to people that they are using SharePoint as part of your SOX Compliance efforts. Don’t just let it show up on their desk one day without telling them why, and don’t expect them to use it if you never tell them that it’s there. That's the problem with a web-based application - no one knows how to open it. Don't assume that your users know anything if you've told them nothing. Stop making them figure it out on their own!
One of the easiest ways to train your users is to make sure that they are using the same software at home as they are at work. I am disappointed at how many people in an enterprise don’t even know about the Microsoft Home Use program that allows employees to purchase software to download and use at home for $10. Why? Because their help desk doesn’t want to be called on to help people install the product at home. Or worse, IT put the information in an e-mail to people who are used to deleting any message that comes in from any departmental address like IT, HR, or Wellness. Why? Because they have a mailbox size limitation and they have to trim the fat to keep their head above water every single day. Because you never taught them what technologies were there to replace attachments in email!
What I’m saying is, don’t just limit the size of their Inbox without teaching them how to use SharePoint and encouraging them to use new tools in MOSS 2007 like blogs and wikis. Set aside time for training and walk the walk by letting employees know that even the CIO is in an executive boardroom on the top floor learning about blogs today. Ask your trainers how to get it done and put it in next year’s budget. You’ll get it back in your bottom line by increasing production and reducing employee turnover. I promise.