I know, downsizing and training aren’t usually put together. Most corporations do not invest the extra money in training workers they are letting go. That is why I was surprised to be talking to my clients during a recent morning training session and find out that their whole department will not exist in a couple of months.
A few of the employees will be relocated to other parts of the corporation. Most will be laid off with a severance package, the length depending on their years of service. Surprisingly, the employees do not have a bad view of their current employer, even though they are being laid off. They even commented on how much they appreciated everything their employer is doing to help them during this transition.
The corporation is investing in getting these displaced workers special training to help them find new jobs. The company believes in helping them succeed, even if they are not employed there anymore. What a great concept! I really like that they are having training sessions for these workers before the department is dissolved in a couple of months.
The training sessions cover Microsoft Office topics like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. During the morning training, we have customized a class to help them fill in the gaps in their knowledge of the software application. In the afternoon we have hour long one-on-one or one-on-two sessions to go over specific questions or target areas in the same software application that we covered in the morning.
This past week the training was on Excel. We had great sessions in the morning and afternoon! All of the students said that they really understood Excel better. They all had great attitudes and really dug in deep to understand all of the formulas, which was of primary concern to many of them.
I am looking forward to my Word sessions with them soon! It is so refreshing to see a corporation who cares about their employees, even during tough economic times like we have experienced the past couple of years.
Have you ever thought about becoming Microsoft certified in Word, Excel, Access, Outlook or PowerPoint? I’m surprised at how many of the clients I train have not thought about adding a Microsoft Office Specialist certificate to their list of accomplishments.
Recently one of my family members, after many years of contemplation, decided to open her own business. She gave me a call and asked me to help her create some of the forms she’ll need. I was impressed that she had already assembled some paper forms that she liked to use for ideas when we created the ones for her soon-to-be formed new company.
In last week’s blog, I looked at Microsoft Office 2010 beta version. My focus was mainly on the overall changes across the whole suite of applications. I wanted to look at the new updates to the individual applications, too.
I’ve been researching Office 2010 lately. Based on my first impression, I’m pretty excited about adopting it when it is released in the first half of 2010. As a trainer for Versitas, I can see so many fun ways to integrate the new elements into a great “new features” class.
This past week, I did a customized 1-on-1 deskside training class on specific topics in Microsoft Excel, Visio, and Project. It had been a while since I’d done training on Visio and Project. As we went over the individual’s questions, I was reminded of what great tools Project and Visio are. (Note: Versitas doesn’t sell any of these products, so these are just my personal thoughts on the software.)
After talking with a couple of people last week about one-to-one training, I realized that some people do not know how useful this type of training is. After almost every one-to-one (sometimes called deskside) training session I’ve done for the first time with someone, they tell me how much they wish they had known about that type of training long ago! I guess that since I’ve been doing this type of training for years, I figured that everyone was aware of customized one-on-one deskside training. That’s what I get for assuming…
In my reading, I ran across a great quote that really got me to thinking about training and its costs/benefits. The article was by a workshop facilitator who said something that I had heard before but was glad to be reminded of again. Her statement was, “What if you train them and they leave? What if you don’t and they stay?” 
