Recently, Jakob Nielsen reported that, while intranet design has improved, usability has gone down.
According to Nielsen, 10 years ago, employees’ average success rate at carrying out basic intranet tasks was 75%. Now it’s 74%.
You’d think that, with improvements in technology and design, today’s intranets would be easier to use, not harder.
While that is true, better technology also means today’s intranets are more complex, and can do more complex tasks than the intranet 10 years ago.
Because of this increasing complexity, intranet user training is as important as ever. With proper training comes higher user adoption. Effective training also means staff will be more likely to use more intranet features and require less support in the long run.
Be prepared to train users when or immediately after launching your intranet. However, keep in mind that most users will need ongoing training as they discover or need to use more features of your intranet.
Consider using these 3 types of intranet user training:
Live Training
This could be part of your overall intranet launch. Plan on having two types of live intranet training:
Generic
By the end of this training, participants should be able to carry out tasks that all intranet users should know, such as:
- filling out their intranet user profile
- uploading files and photos
- posting comments on a blog
- posting status updates
- creating a calendar and adding events
- sending notifications to other users
- filling out electronic forms, such as requests for leave and equipment
Specialized
This is training for user groups or individual users who will have special tasks in the intranet. This includes section administrators, blog authors, and calendar managers.
Record your live intranet training sessions so you can use it for…
Intranet-Based Training
It’s inevitable. Some staff will miss the live training. New staff will join your company and need training. Those who have been trained will forget and need a refresher.
This is where intranet-based training comes in. Use the intranet itself to deliver on-demand training sessions to users. In Noodle intranet, you can use the Page Application to create a special intranet training wiki. This could include:
Video
Share video recordings of your live training. Break these up into short videos, one topic each, so users can find what they need easily, and quickly learn the exact task they want to learn.
User Manual
Some users prefer to read, so think of making user manuals in the form of PDFs and intranet pages, which can be part of your intranet-based training wiki, too.
FAQs
In all your training sessions, compile the questions that get asked most often, and compile FAQs into a page.
On-the-Job Training
Users will continue to need your help as they go about their daily jobs. Expect emails, phone calls, and in-person cries of “Help! How do I do this?”
This one-on-one training can be time-consuming, but you can leverage it by turning it into evergreen training. For example, keep all the questions you receive by email, as well as your answers, and post them into the FAQ page of your intranet training wiki.
If it’s necessary for you to demonstrate a certain task, make a screen recording of it, and post the video on your intranet training page.
Alternatively, you could create a an intranet support ticket e-form in your intranet, where users can submit their questions or report intranet-related problems. You can put your responses and solutions in the form as well. Everything gets archived by the intranet and remains searchable for users who may have similar problems.
Archive everything you do so you don’t need to respond to the same questions over and over again. Instead, you could point the user to the existing resources in your intranet.
These are the three different approaches to intranet user training.
Have you been using all of them?