5 Responses

1. Intranet Training for Non-PC Literate Staff
   Paul, firstly I admit I work for a company who provides e-Learning as part of their services. However, I have been involved in this sort of training for many years. He is my starting place:

   1. Work out the benefits for the user – selling these will make people less ‘scared’ of the process.

   2. Use CBT / e-Learning as part of your solution – the only way people get over the technology issues is to practice – safely.

   3. Allow the process to be repeated, give time and resources to ‘play’ when it is relevant to them.

   4. Think about creating ‘super-users’ – peers rather than supervisors to help in the work environment.

   If you would like to know more about my experiences then please feel free to contact me.

   Good luck.

   Paul Allman.
   [email protected]

2. Support and Communication
   Paul

   I too work for an e learning company, but the experience I share with you is based on my 14 years experience with Lloyds TSB.

   Many sponsors charge into these type of projects and are dazzled by what the technology can offer them and with dreams of all singing & all dancing courses set in virtual surroundings. My experience tells me however that without two things any project is set for failure.

   The first is support. Despite the fact that people will say the course is intuitive, some people will still not be able to understand what to do. Human support, ideally via the phone is essential to answer questions only people can come up with!

   The second is communication. You know why the course is needed, the sponsor knows why it is needed, so make sure you communicate this to the people who actually have to do it.

   If you would like to talk more, please drop me a line.

   Gareth

3. Support, then more support
   As Paul mentioned, the super user and mentor approach worked for me in an earlier life – we implemented exactly the same project as you. We provided PC skills training as part of the induction. we provided extensive on-line help for the system user, we provided a help line in to HR, we made sure that there were plenty of ‘super users’ around the business, and also, we provided mentors as part of he induction process to help new people fit in quicker. All of these routes made sure there was enough support for the user – perhaps as important as the initial training was.

4. Encouraging staff to use their intranet
   Paul,

   Your questions – and the responses below – raise useful points. There are plenty of organisations with pretty dormant intranet because no-one maintains them and no-one facilitates their use. All this needs attention in the planning stage. Some suggestions:-

   1. If staff don’t have their own PC, think carefully about where to locate public-access machines. Put some in friendly places – staff rooms, cafeteria, and some in more discreet areas. Allow users to web-browse so that they can experiment for themselves and become more familiar.
   2. Encourage all staff to become more computerate literate – perhaps by sponsoring access to ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence), even if computers are not part of their work
   3. Ensure there is really good – and well signposted – on-screen help menus – particularly Help written by someone with author-skills and people-skills
   4. Run other activities on your intranet which will encourage all staff to regularly visit e.g. interactive stuff, quizzes, staff offers, fun pages, etc.

   Tim Pickles
   Founder, TrainingZONE

5. Super Users, Inductions & Intranets
   I also implemented a super user programme, and this proved to be immensly successful, especially for the’new recruits’ and non IT literate staff. Some-one you work alongside is much easier to approach for help. Especially with regard to IT related skills, a lot of people feel embarrassed to approach some-one from IT for help.

   I have also developed and rolled out IT induction programmes for new staff, which ideally should be delivered just before the employee starts to use their pc. If you leave it too long from induction to actual use, people forget how to use the system and don’t want to bother you to ask for help. This leads to them using it less and less and eventually not at all if they can get away with it.

   I agree with the idea of quizzes, games etc as this is a good way to tempt people into using the intranet on a regular basis. In a previous company we ran an intranet competition, whereby users had to find the answers to 5 questions located around the site. Gift vouchers, wine and chocolates were awarded as prizes.

   Also we ran ‘question of the day’ on our intranet site, where questions of varying difficulty were posted. Users were encouraged to answer and if they got it right their names appeared on the ‘winners’ list the next day. This became so popular that we had to make the questions harder !. But it served its purpose, people looked at the intranet every day.

   The key thing to the success of this project is not to assume that because you have carried out the training once thats it. Training may occur at an event but learning is a continual process, and you need to give people a reason to want to carry on learning.