Picture this scenario; you’re an I.T. consultant for a moderately sized company. You feel confident in your skills as a system admin, and look forward to keeping the integrity of the software that makes this company money intact. However, as you look into your first service ticket you quickly find out that you’re running a computer daycare due to the majority of the workplace not knowing how to navigate their software, even the computer that they are typing on. Deleted emails, sign in problems, and poorly handled peripherals plague many admins due to the fact that the time spent on these non issues could be spent on actual issues, like maintenance and upgrades.
To start off, feedback from I.T. is sorely lacking, I.T. has a high turnover rate because of “fighting for additional I.T. spots when business grows” (Reed, John. “Sources Of Job Frustration for IT.” InformationWeek. N.p., 11 Feb. 2015. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.) This means that when business expands, they tend to hire more technologically inept workers than I.T. consultants, therefore straining already limited time spent on something more productive. To also supplement this statement is that there is usually “conflicts with management” (Reed, p.7) which can result in site wide changes that were made without consulting I.T. Simply put, the workers need to see the importance of navigating through their work issued laptops on their own because their “safety net” I.T. department is already backed into a corner.
The best solution to this would be adequate training regarding any piece of software in a series of meetings so the workers would be motivated to go (including VPs , since many don’t interact with a computer much outside of the occasional email). Hands on demos would be optimal, so users won’t be intimidated in interacting with any software they have to use. What can also be done is making incentives for properly using their computer and not damage their device or stress the I.t. consultant as a result. Therefore maximum efficiency in the workplace can be achieved.
