Small Business IT mistake 9: No training

I never ceased to be amazed at how we don’t train staff on how to use computers. As business owners we wouldn't dream of not training staff to use a forklift or lathe, let alone give a company car to an employee without a driver’s license.

Yet almost no staff get training in using computers.

I remember clearly the first day I faced a personal computer. I was sat down in front a computer on it and told to get on with it. It took me half an hour to turn the thing on, it was nearly a week before I got anything productive done.

People are wonderfully inventive and curious beasts. Most folk will eventually figure out how to do something by trial and error. The problem is this leads to bad and inefficient habits in the office.

Couple this with the self taught office guru and you have a problem like I described earlier; those bad habits start getting very expensive.

Training's surprisingly easy to find. There are the local newspaper and Yellow Pages, but many computer trainers there share the problem with the local computer tech that anyone can claim to be one.

Far better in my experience are the local community colleges or the corporate training companies. Corporate training is expensive and sometimes their instructors leave something to be desired but the courses are usually well structured. The local community college is cheaper but it usually requires staff to attend out of hours.

There is a question about offsite versus onsite training. Onsite training is cheaper and uses the equipment that the staff work on every day. In my view, offsite training is best for staff as it gets them away from distractions.

While offsite training adds to the cost of computers and staff, it's money well spent for businesses of all sizes as it improves the productivity and morale of staff immensely.

From the businesses owner’s point of view training increases the return on their IT investment dramatically.