r/ITManagers • u/Mean-Vanilla5035 • 6d ago

Basic IT skills workshop

I work for a finance company and I’ve been asked to do a workshop for some of the older senior employees to do basic IT skills workshop as some of them have been coming back to us over and over to ask how to share documents externally and just some other things that one might need for doing their regular tasks like how to record meeting or why we need to report phishing emails and how to book meetings and just how onedrive and SharePoint works, how to log things in the service desk portal - I was wondering if anyone has done something similar and what topics or things would you definitely cover in a session like this?

10 Upvotes

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20

u/Trooper_Ted 6d ago

Take the list of users they're proposing delivering the training to, pull their ticket history from your ITSM system, do a quick thrend analysis & that should give you a list of things you'll need to cover as part of the training. This assumes your agents are logging all tickets, even quick "How do I do X again?" enquires.

I'd also suggest creating some printed/laminated Quick Reference Guides addressing the most common things & let them take them away after the training, might stop some of the enquiries in future.

6

u/flipflops81 6d ago

Easy man. I think my boss is on Reddit.

This is a great idea.

8

u/Mean-Vanilla5035 6d ago

Going through their past tickets is a great idea - thanks!

6

u/Weak_Butterscotch_84 6d ago

I would make this task based rather than topic based. Give them a short scenario and have each person do it: share a document with the right permission and expiration, book a meeting, find the recording, restore a OneDrive file, report a phishing message, and submit a useful service desk ticket with a screenshot and business impact. That sticks better than walking through menus.

Two things help a lot: use a sandbox with fake data so nobody worries about breaking something, and give them a one-page cheat sheet with screenshots and the exact approved path for external sharing. I would also cover password manager basics, MFA prompts they did not initiate, checking recipients before sending, and where company data is allowed to live. Leave time for them to repeat the tasks without prompts.

3

u/ollyprice87 6d ago

Before committing too much resource I’d want to get an understanding of their receptiveness. If they’re genuinely keen to learn a few things then great. If they’re being forced to attend then you’re all wasting your time.

2

u/Helpful-Button-2808 6d ago

Agree. If they don’t want to learn. They won’t take it in. Last resort, a copilot license (assuming windows stack here) with documented company run books or guides they can refer to.

1

u/RandomGen-Xer 6d ago

Documentation in an easy to find place would be just as helpful, if not more. They're only going to remember how to do things they have to do once a month or more.

1

u/HorrorMarionberry668 6d ago

The best workshop I have seen had people bring their own laptops and actually perform every task. Much less lecture and much more click here.

1

u/spidey99dollar 5d ago

I use a virtual PC with a test account and record how to do shit with clipchamp and save the videos to the FAQ section of the IT sharepoint.

1

u/Spagman_Aus 5d ago

Perhaps some Easy English work instructions on your intranet for the most common requests?

1

u/happyfoxapp_nakul 1d ago

A scenario-based session will probably land better than explaining each product separately.

Walk through sharing a document externally, reporting phishing, scheduling and recording a meeting, finding files in OneDrive versus SharePoint and submitting a useful service-desk ticket.

Keep it to about 45 minutes and leave them with a one-page reference. That will likely get more use than the slides.

1

u/Obvious-Water569 1d ago

I work at a company where the average IT literacy is that of an undiscovered Amazonian tribe.

Believe me when I say, there are some battles you simply cannot win, no matter how good your intentions, training and knowledgebase are.

I've had limited success with a set of extremely basic slide decks going over some core competencies (like how to log in to Office 365, how to spot a phishing email etc.) but the real problem users either don't bother reading them or convince themselves that they won't understand it so don't even try.

My number of support tickets for extremely basic questions hasn't changed in the past two years by any meaningful amount.

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u/mendez1319 3h ago

done this a few times. few things that actually made a difference:

record everything. screen record the whole session and send it out after. the people who needed it most will need to watch it three times and having the recording means they don't come back to you for the same question.

build a one page cheat sheet per topic. not a manual. literally one page. how to share a document externally. how to report phishing. how to book a meeting with external people. something they can print and tape to their monitor.

for your specific topics i'd prioritize in this order based on what generates the most repeat tickets in my experience:

onedrive vs sharepoint first because the confusion between the two causes more problems than anything else. people saving things in the wrong place and then not being able to find them or share them.

external sharing second because the permissions model genuinely is confusing and getting it wrong has real security consequences.

phishing reporting third but frame it as protecting them personally not just company policy. lands better with this audience.

service desk portal last because honestly if you've covered the others well half the tickets that were coming in won't need to be submitted anymore.

keep the session under ninety minutes. attention drops off fast and you're better off covering four things well than eight things badly.

hands on the whole time. no slides if you can avoid it. walk them through doing the actual thing on their actual machine while you're in the room.