We currently spend about 30 minutes giving a very brief overview of M365, Teams, and Outlook along with help signing in and setting up MFA for the first time.
We still have quite a bit of training we’d like to do, but find we never have the time.
Do any of you provide digital training or onboarding for staff? Have you found a method that is successful?
I don’t want to make “Here’s how Excel works” videos, because there’s tons of those already, but I’m thinking more like, “Here’s how to reset your voicemail password, connect to a printer, schedule meetings, etc.” but include tailored details that apply to us, and avoid details that don’t apply to us (i.e. we don’t use room/resource calendars so including that in training would be confusing)
My goal is to spend 15 minutes getting people signed in to their computer, then providing them a playlist of videos to work through on their first day with a combination of IT training and other cultural videos on how we operate as an organization (IT would only be responsible for the IT videos, of course).
I’m a big fan of making learning materials readily available to staff. Not everyone picks up on things right away, and onboarding can be a chaotic time anyway. Even if you had time to show them everything, there’s probably too much to learn and remember to absorb everything. Existing staff can benefit from refreshers and ongoing education as well.
That said, I’m also a fan of not making any more of the material than is required for your unique circumstances. Curation is key, and resources like the Microsoft 365 Basic training series is an excellent evergreen resource that gets updated alongside the product.
I definitely like the idea of having some cultural onboarding as part of the same resource, see if you can get Facilities and other teams to collaborate on assembling a full resource kit and build a learning site on Sharepoint to provide a single place for people to find it all. Any products you use that don’t provide training material, reach out and press them for that resource. And be sure to have some videos where you talk about the philosophy of your department and how you operate rather than being fully focused on the technology itself. Why is IT there, what are your goals, and what are you not there to do?
I’ve utilized the recording function in Teams to create short training videos for our staff on specific functions that they may not use very frequently, so that they can refer back them after their initial 30 minute training with me. Each video is 2-10 minutes in length and is located in a Training folder in our Staff channel in Teams. All of my training sessions are over Teams since I am a remote employee, so I offer to record the session for the staff person as well, so that they can replay our meeting later if they feel they missed some details or just don’t want to take notes during our initial session.