It can be a real challenge to properly staff properly to use and contribute to an intranet, particularly if struggling with a lack of management support at all levels. Your intranet can’t succeed without trained colleagues that actively contribute. So do opt for classroom training, workshops, e-learning or do you choose to dream of instant iPod-like adoption?
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending one of the intranet groups in our community of practice, where we briefly discussed the different options for training staff:
- Classroom training with a well defined curriculum might be the classical approach, but it seems like this is mainly used to train CMS administrators and not really to train intranet editors and other intranet practitioners
- Interactive workshops is a popular method to get people together and spend half-a-day or so on teaching select staff how to get the most out of the intranet.
- E-learning is used by some, e.g. to introduce intranet features to new hires or when releasing new business applications on the intranet. E-learning seemed particularly popular with geographically disbursed organisations wanting to reduce travel cost.
An interesting alternative to the usual options was presented by a retailer that had successfully introduced a regular “intranet café”. Every other week on Wednesday afternoons the intranet manager and his team made themselves available in a training room to anybody interested, who could then show up without the need for any prior registration. Some would show up with specific questions, while other occasional intranet editors would show up simply to get intranet work done while knowing that a helping hand was nearby. These intranet cafés had become tremendously popular and really made an impact on training staff on using the intranet. Quite a nice bottom-up approach!
The importance of intranet training is often underestimated and when it is offered, it tends to be overly technical. Remember that repetition and reality are key elements to learning. If you do the training on the real intranet with real content, it helps to motivate everyone to work in the right way from the outset.
How have you managed to train your colleagues on using the intranet?
Thanks to @maurocardarelli and @rvantwisk for valuable input.
If you’d like to learn from other organisations where the intranet is truly business critical, I’d encourage you to join our international intranet conference in Copenhagen on March 22 2011.
Nadine McMahon September 22nd, 2009 8:57
We have been using this ‘intranet cafe’ approach for a couple of months also. Attendance is small at the moment, but that is good for us, as the help is more personalised, & I am an intranet team of 1
Also, content authors start to help each other in this environment too, which is good reinforcement for them, and great for our author community spirit.
For the future I might also look at having something simple prepared to ‘teach’ them as well, as some people do come along wanting to learn something new.
But yes, I would recommend this method. It’s takes little preparation for me, but gives value to those who need it, when they need it.
Pilar September 22nd, 2009 8:57
I am a traning and communications officer and together with the rest of the intranet team we are at the begining of a very exciting project to developed a whole new intranet in Drupal.
I will be responsible for creating a completly new intranet strategy. I think the the “intranet cafe” is a great idea I will use in order to support aditional queries but I still think that is very important to provide a first time complete training.
Thank you very much for the idea
Pilar
Patrick Sikes September 23rd, 2009 8:57
“Intranet Café” is an awesome idea!!! I have a Intranet Authors meeting once a year and it is pretty much me standing in front of a room of authors telling them about what is new…there is very little interaction and I always seem to overwhelm.
Also being an intranet team of one, the café idea seems to be a great way for my to spend an hour every couple weeks and maybe have a few less unscheduled phone calls interruption my development time….
Thanks!
ana October 11th, 2009 8:57
Hi Janus, I don’t get it: what is the training about? is it about content, purpose of intranet, how to navigate ? I cannot follow. If any of this, it means that the intranet it’s so not ok, that you need trainig to get through and no way it will catch on others if its not easy and userfriendly. Rather than doing intranet workshops, better show succes stories. Follow up on each content contributor on how many people have seen the content, how did you promote it, what happened in a couple of weeks with his contents and then it will become personal and people will get interested. at least that’s our model. but still.. maybe I did not get the point of the post.
J. Boye | Migrating to a new intranet – how do you support the content owners? January 22nd, 2010 8:57
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