How do you get the message to users?
posted by Tomas Mcinernery on August 27, 2007
Quick trip to the US last week saw some quality time in the Heathrow departure lounge with time to think (dangerous habit) much of it I spent working on possible solutions for an issue I raised on my last blog – how to enable our employees to collaborate simply and quickly, despite the fact our tool strategy has become somewhat separated – perhaps we are just not getting our message across to users?
One of the primary areas for development here, as with many IT tools, is how to educate users. People do complicated things everyday and although none of the functions are that complicated, they are above the ‘natural pickup and use’ curve, in other words they require some learning.
Do people have the time to learn these tools? Internally the answer is normally no, and although I give an IT type suck of the teeth at that point (rather like a building contractor, I have it down to quite an art) my mind draws back to the last time I tried to raise a purchase order internally – a classic complicated process in most organisations – my attitude then was very much ‘you’re Finance; just go make it work and pay them!’ in a similar vein IT tools should just be pick up and play
That said, we have an issue – and that’s a percentage of users don’t have the time or inclination to learn how to use new tools. We are trying the following things. So to the reason for this blog – do you use anything else more exciting?
Face to face – the classic but involves an upfront cost of travel. I would argue this normally works best; but always happy to be proved wrong
Virtually delivered – I know from my own experience 20 mins worth of virtual training is delivered with all the gusto and pace of a sleeping dog, our security team adds on tests at the end of their learning presentations, but I’m not sure testing is the way to go for IT. Making these delivery methods exciting works to a point, but participants have experienced some bad examples before so any mention of virtual training automatically causes them to read their emails
Viral marketing – small posters, quick hit training, tagging onto other material, code names etc help to draw people into the training content
Perhaps it’s the approach, training material is typically ‘read this before you have seen the tool’ maybe a reference type approach may work better – after all it doesn’t matter how you deliver/receive the training – it’s the content that counts – your thoughts?
Ps – happy to report the summer finally made it to our shored this weekend. Those readers in the UK enjoy! I was at home with my family (Jersey, CI) and ate far too many 99s
Comments (6)
tagged: computability, training
Comments
Aug 28 | TechieBird said:
Tapping into the naked greed of your average employee works pretty well… I worked at a place where they were good at this. When the SharePoint infrastructure was being used less than hoped, they had giveaways and prize draws for anyone who created a personal site or added content to a team site. Another time they had an IT security drive where anyone who could answer some simple questions on their web site got a free mini-football. (You’d be amazed how many people wanted one “for the kids”.) Branded freebies(sorry, ‘promotional gifts’) generated a surprising amount of enthusiasm in a normally cynical population, and cost a lot less than, say, a few flights back and forth across continents, or having to mobilise half the IT dept over a weekend following a security incident.
Aug 28 | Tomas mcinerney said:
@TechieBird
Free gifts - good idea. I may suggest this…wonder how much discount we get on Apple* products, a few iPhones* may encourage user adoption…
Aug 29 | Michael Schaffner said:
“a percentage of users don’t have the time or inclination to learn how to use new tools” might be OK. We shouldn’t presume that 100% need to use all the tools we provide in all cases. People have different styles of working and we in IT shouldn’t try to force a change blindly. If their management want them to use then it is a different story but if we try to force it because IT thinks it will make them more productive then we are overstepping our bounds.
Aug 29 | Tomas mcinerney said:
@Michael Schaffner
Nice point Michael - I quite often fall into the trap that everyone must use IT products when, perhaps, they may not. Working out a total available market for an IT tool can help estimate what 100% usage looks like (and allow targeted communications) but it’s increasingly hard to measure these, especially for generic products like bridge booking which was on my mind when I was typing - good point though, I like to think if the product is good enough you won’t need to push it hard at all! Rgds. tm
Aug 30 | Alex Balk said:
Evangelists can do a great job of “infecting people with their enthusiasm”. Have a few people blog about their experiences using the tool, suggest tips & tricks and show the advantages they gained. Combine that with TechieBird’s excellent idea of freebies and you have a cheap, effective, “viral-marketing” strategy.
Aug 30 | Tomas mcinerney said:
@Alex Balk
Evangelists are an interesting solution, we use ‘champions’ sometimes - it’s finding the time for those people to learn and share (though, those who are excited enough can always find time) fair expectations help (mind you, if we also give out free gifts priorities change..!) Sounds like a good method to try out for our next launch