Increase Productivity: Low-Hanging Fruit, Part One

I have yet to encounter an office where the staff are proficient in computer basics on their computer: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, file management, email, or even the use of a browser. It is appalling to me that often management are the least productive in the use of these ubiquitous tools. I don't care whether you have MAC, Windows or Linux and your company uses MS Office, Google Docs or freeware like OpenOffice, you and your staff should have a base level of software and computer literacy.

Bringing all staff to a basic set computer literacy skills is the lowest hanging fruit you can pick for improving productivity, and by low hanging, I mean it is so low you could pick it off the ground.  The king of office products is MS Office and I would be surprised if all staff in any given office uses or could use more than five percent of its capabilities.

So why don't organizations pick this fruit?  Do they assume everyone is knowledgeable on how to use these products?  Do they feel they can't afford to train their staff?  The corollary question is can we afford not to train staff in the basics? 

So, how do you pick this low-hanging productivity fruit? There are many alternatives, please feel to mix and match one or all to your organization:

• The most expensive, but most effective, is to have instructor-led sessions for all staff.  You set the standard and provide on-going training to staff.
• Make sure you have a champion in every department.  This champion will be the go-to person and be able to demonstrate effective use of the computer.
• So often the Help Desk is only involved in break/fix; change that around and have their prime focus on 'How To'.  How do I do this in Word?  Have them be there for all aspects of coaching.  As a by-product, you'll make their job more interesting and satisfying.
• Hold user-led lunch-and-learn sessions.  Have users share their own productivity tips and tricks.  For the price of a few pizzas, unless your organization is ultra-cheap and have staff bring their own lunch, this is very inexpensive training.
• Identify fee-for-service and/or free training sites on the web.  Both Microsoft and Google have free training sites - take advantage of these.

A word of advice:  You can provide all the training you want, but what good is it unless you know what you need to be effective for each staff member's job?  HR listen up: put a computer literacy skills matrix together for each job in your organization.  For example, list the software functions employees should know in order to do his or her job: in word processing identify the 50 things you should know, 50 things in spreadsheets, 30 things for email, 20 things for browsing, etc. . HR could have three levels of knowledge - basic, intermediate and advanced for all topics (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email, browsing, computer operating system).  Clearly list the expectations of your staff.

This low-hanging productivity fruit is so easy to take advantage of.  Just do it!

Increase your productivity even further, check out Increase Productivity: Low-Hanging Fruit Part Two in my next blog.