What do you do when your staff need training?

Are you the Managing Partner, HR Manager, IT Director or the Owner of your business?  How do you know when you need to invest in training? We all know that providing training for staff is a good thing, it also comes at a price. The price of days out of the office, not earning, the price of the training itself and the cost of any equipment or training rooms that my need to be hired.

When is this cost justified? At which point do you decide NO MORE we need to train people?

Jill is the HR manager of a firm of accountants. She is constantly being told by staff that they are out of their depth with the jobs they are being asked to do. Something she hears frequently from team members is “ just because everyone uses the internet and email, does not mean they know the best way to sort a list” or “ I can surf the internet and do my online shopping, but no-one ever taught me how to write a formula”

She may have staff like Caroline (not her real name). Caroline works for several partners and finds herself spending hours sorting and filtering data to get the answers to the questions the partners are asking.

Then from the Partners perspective, spreadsheets are not being delivered in the way they want them. Information is presented in a hap hazard way. There is a feeling that time is being wasted on menial tasks that should take minutes but instead are taking hours.

So what is Jill to do? Jill has to come up with a plan that will get buy in from the partners. She gets in touch with her friendly IT Training Company and requests their help.  They suggest a Learning Needs Analysis to see where the issues are and how staff perceive themselves and their own lack of knowledge. Once the gaps have been identified a plan can be created to fill those gaps.

Next week we will look at how that plan begins to take shape and what Jill and the IT Training Company can do to get everyone performing at their best.