Daily Archives: April 6, 2011

Start an employee training program in minutes

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

In my last post, I emphasized the need your IT people have in training and education, , , it is a key motivator for IT people and ranks as one of the top 3 reasons people say they stay with their company in surveys year after year.

How would you like to have the ability to customize your own training curriculum in minutes and make it available to your employees?

Tom Mochal and I spent three years developing weekly 20 Minute IT Manager (20MITM) training sessions to make a comprehensive training library available to IT managers. There are 162 sessions in the series, each 20 minutes or less in length, , , an ideal time to focus on a specific topic.

Many of our clients host weekly training lunches or early morning training breakfasts for their team where they deliver a 20MITM session while everyone eats. At the end of the session, they discuss the training material and how it applies to their situation or what they can take from the session to improve their business.

The 20MITM sessions focus on 5 major categories that are important for IT organizations in any industry:

IT management
Project management
People management
Leadership
Personal development

In these categories, there are dozens of training classes that are appropriate for every IT employee to learn about, not just your IT managers. For instance, all your employees would benefit in learning about:

Problem solving techniques
Project roles
Simple project management tools
Fundamental status reporting
Dealing with an unhappy client
Effective communication tools
Understanding IT employee work behavior
Prioritizing your work
Coping with stress
Active listening is the key to effective communication

CLICK HERE to download and review the entire list of 162 sessions.

From such a large and diverse list of topics, you could create several training tracks for your staff, , , one for managers and supervisors, one for project managers, one for Help Desk staff, another for the programming support team, , , even one for your desktop technicians.

You could also put the training programs onto your Intranet and make them available for anyone in your company via the Enterprise license.

Create a specific program targeted to a group of people or make it available as needed in your company. The point is that you are making an investment in your people’s education and growing their professional skills, , , and this investment is valuable for your employees and your company.

Why is it valuable? Simple, , , one single tip or tool discussed in any one of the 20MITM sessions could be worth thousands of dollars to your company in cost savings, improving productivity, or avoiding a key risk.

Purchase individual licenses for $499.00 each or an Enterprise license for $2,000.00 that gives anyone in your company access to 162 online training sessions via your Intranet. It also gives you a great vehicle to develop teamwork and improve productivity of your IT organization.

CLICK HERE to learn more.

GET STARTED in minutes by ordering the complete 20MITM series, 162 sessions in all.

20 Minute IT Manager sessions are also available in single sessions at $9.99 each. Details are available at www.20minuteitmanager.com.

Top motivator for IT people is training and education

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the top motivators for IT staff is always training and education. IT people have a huge need for continuing education in order to develop their skills and become more valuable.

Training and education is always in the top three reasons why IT employees stay with their company, what motivates them, and what they look for in a company.

If you are not investing in your employees, they will become disillusioned and seek alternatives that feeds this need; it can even cause them to leave your company. Because training is such a big issue for IT employees, you should develop a specific training program for each employee every year and include it in their Performance Plans.

Doing this shows commitment and an interest in your employee, , , and they pick up on it very quickly.

Some managers don’t want to train or educate their employees for fear it might position the employee to go somewhere else. My belief is that if you are managing your organization well, this investment is a big reason people stay with you, , , not look for ways to leave.

There are many training options these days, especially with all the online classes. There is absolutely no reason to not have an active training focus in your company in today’s world, , , and if you do not, you are missing a real opportunity with your employees.

The benefits are huge. Not only will your staff be doing things better, this investment goes over great in your efforts to improve morale, build teamwork and to develop a more capable organization.

Start an employee training program in minutes
In my next post, I’ll give you a quick and easy way to create an employee training focus in your company in minutes.

CEO doesn’t allow use of the overhead paging system

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

I was with a company once where it was common knowledge that the CEO would not allow anyone to use the overhead paging system. As a software development and support company, our rather large Help Desk organization had a true need to locate key people from time to time, , , and so did our switchboard operator. After all, we were a service organization.

When asked about the “no overhead paging” policy, the CEO was confused, , , you might say, even shocked.

No policy existed and he thought the need was certainly appropriate.

The reason everyone thought a policy existed that prevented the use of overhead paging was because when the company was much smaller (and everyone was in the same small building), the CEO discouraged it when clients or prospects visited their offices. He thought it was disruptive to the sales process and less professional, , , but that was 5-6 years ago.

Years later, employees were in several buildings with many floors and separate areas for things like Help Desk. In fact, the executive wing and conference areas where prospects and clients met with sales people was in a completely separate area and even had the ability to have the paging system turned off in their area, a requirement the CEO had installed when the company moved to a larger building.

The CEO had no issue whatsoever in preventing support groups from using the paging system. In fact, he made the comment, “I don’t know how you function without using it.”

The lesson: Sometimes, things exist because people think there is a reason but there may not be a reason at all. If it’s worth doing, go ask about it, , , you might find as our company did that a long standing taboo didn’t really exist at all.