ICT Management > Training

Worker IT skills can be agency IT skills

By Lasa Information Systems Team

When a member of staff is trained, sometimes it is important that they share their new knowledge with other workers in your organisation.

An advice centre recently had new email software installed on their network. One member of staff, Hardeep, was asked to attend a training course - 'sending emails and organising your inbox'.

She found the course very useful and was quickly able to put her new skills into practice. As a result of her enthusiasm, other staff members wanted to know how to use email. Each day Hardeep was called away from her desk to help with sending emails and attachments and, by the end of the first week, had spent four hours trying to help her colleagues though in a random way. She began to feel frustrated and to resent helping the other workers because she was constantly being interrupted in her own work. The other advice workers were resentful because they had not been on the training.

To develop the whole agency's IT skills, why not have a policy that time is allocated the day after a course for the worker who has attended to share the materials and knowledge s/he has gained with other workers. S/he is then recognised as a valuable resource and the other workers can be trained by that worker so that they too benefit from her/his new skills. Allocate time for training into everybody's work plans. It's hard for people to be enthusiastic about training when it means they have to work extra hours to do the work they missed while they were on a course.

For more ideas see the knowledgebase article "How to develop an IT training policy"

It can help if staff have a say in what training sessions they attend. If people feel they are increasing their skill sets and keeping up to date with new technologies, it often increases their loyalty to the organisation and decreases expensive staff turnover.