What's the average ratio of IT trainers to company employees?

It depends!
This really depends on what sort of IT training you want to run, how you want to run it (e.g. class room sessions, CBT, short ‘brown-bag’ lunch sessions), how many people in your organisation require it, what do they really use, are you changing to a new system, do you use external trainers and do you want to use department SMEs (Subject Matter Experts – who can be fully trained themselvess and then coach others in the team)…?

If you are just talking about MS Office training for 800 current users and are wanting to run class-room courses you are probably looking at one full-time trainer at the very most. But do consider SMEs, CBTs, part-time trainers/ contractors (e,g, 1 day a week), lunch sessions and specific on-the-job coaching.

In my opinion, gone are the days when people do a one day ‘basic excel’ course. It’s much better to do a short session on ‘Using Pivot Tables’ and make them use their own data. I’ve also very successfully used an external company who do a detailed TNA and then do short one-to-one coaching sessions for key staff.

Feedback on CBTs has been mixed, but once they ‘get into it’ I’ve received positive feedback – but I tend to start off with small facilitated group sessions who then run with it themselves after a couple of sessions.

Annah

3 Responses

TrainingZone says:

December 5, 2003 at 5:53 pm

It depends!
This really depends on what sort of IT training you want to run, how you want to run it (e.g. class room sessions, CBT, short ‘brown-bag’ lunch sessions), how many people in your organisation require it, what do they really use, are you changing to a new system, do you use external trainers and do you want to use department SMEs (Subject Matter Experts – who can be fully trained themselvess and then coach others in the team)…?

If you are just talking about MS Office training for 800 current users and are wanting to run class-room courses you are probably looking at one full-time trainer at the very most. But do consider SMEs, CBTs, part-time trainers/ contractors (e,g, 1 day a week), lunch sessions and specific on-the-job coaching.

In my opinion, gone are the days when people do a one day ‘basic excel’ course. It’s much better to do a short session on ‘Using Pivot Tables’ and make them use their own data. I’ve also very successfully used an external company who do a detailed TNA and then do short one-to-one coaching sessions for key staff.

Feedback on CBTs has been mixed, but once they ‘get into it’ I’ve received positive feedback – but I tend to start off with small facilitated group sessions who then run with it themselves after a couple of sessions.

Annah
User deleted says:

December 9, 2003 at 9:43 am

Ratio of IT Trainers to Staff
I am THE IT trainer in an organisation of 400 and I think that’s probably about average. I’d be interested to see what others say.
TrainingZone says:

December 17, 2003 at 3:09 pm

One Man Band
I am THE IT trainer for 600 users onsite but also “look after” and visit 2-3 times a year depending on software changes etc 3 other sites. I cover MS Office, Lotus Notes and a number of other software applications, but no financial software (apart from Excel).