Training, Importance of
Imagine this. You’ve hired a consultant to create an information management system to ensure all your employees have access to all of the information they need, when they need it. The initial set-up is done, a standard operating procedure (SOP) document has been created, and everything is ready to go. Your consultant sends you an invoice, you pay, and that’s that.
Great. But now what? Your employees have a new system to use and no training. Sure, there’s an SOP, but even if it is the gold standard of SOPs (short, concise, easy to understand), it doesn’t replace training. A Norwegian study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that training was a significant predictor of technology adoption in small- and medium-sized enterprises.
In order for any new technology to be successful, the people who are expected to use it need to
Believe in it, and
Use it correctly.
Ideally, the new technology is solving a problem that everyone recognizes as a problem. If this is the case, you’re more likely to have an easy transition to adoption. If someone doesn’t recognize the problem, then the first step is to get them on board. Convince the naysayer that if their colleagues find it easier to do their jobs, her job will be easier too.
Once you have everyone on board with the new technology, they need to know how to use it to its full potential. Just reading an SOP isn’t enough. I’m a firm believer that people learn better (and more willingly) if they understand why they are learning. The trainer should understand what problems the system is solving, understand what the employees do, and be able to demonstrate how the system can make everyone’s work life easier.
The WHY here is two-fold. First, obviously, the new technology is solving a problem. You want that problem not to be a problem anymore, so you learn the software. But there is a second WHY. In order for a new information management system to work, it has to be used correctly. There will probably be some small habits that need to be adopted. No one likes adopting new habits.
With the right person or people designing your system, new habits will be minimal and easy to incorporate into existing workflows. For example, maybe you were already adding metadata to documents, but everyone was using different terminology so your tags were all over the place. People had to guess what something might be tagged with. Now, with the new system, you have a fixed set of metadata tags to choose from. You’re not adding a new step, just making the step more controlled.
In any case, training is a crucial part of adopting a new information management system (or any other technology). I have 10+ years training students to use unfamiliar software and a graduate certificate in online teaching. Once I get your new system set up, I can make sure that all your stakeholders can use it, and want to use it!
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