Are your staff and office locations ready for the IT revolution? Are they even ready for the world with IT today?

Bill Gates has received a large amount of press coverage this week for launching Microsoft’s vision of how we will interact with computers in the next 15 years. This will probably mean that the use of the QWERTY keyboard disappears and that understanding the way computers work will have to become second nature for the developed world’s workforce.

However it seems that many members of the work force are not even up to speed with where we are at the moment. How many of your staff would understand what I mean when I ask them what the following key press combinations should do: 

1) CTRL+X, ALT+TAB, CTRL+V

2) CTRL+P (Print)

(answers at the end of the post)

If the truth is next to none then your company may need to start worrying about it’s productivity. Keyboard shortcuts on their own may only help you save 5-10 minutes a day. But add that up across say 200 days in a year and that equates to 2-4 days lost. Imagine there are 10-20 things similarly time wasting in the way someone works. Can you even touch-type?

Microsoft’s vision is one of having many more things integrated into one device, even more processes automated and accessed. For many businesses productivity will involve having people that can use these systems quickly and unaided. If your staff can’t cut and paste using the keyboard are they really going to be able to use 6 different programs at once, work from multiple locations and understand the latest buzzwords that come along.

Many companies will embrace this fully and see it as an opportunity, others as a hassle. Training staff to be more efficient and skilled, launching products to meet this new world and learning how to make sure existing products don’t become expensive legacy systems will be crucial to remaining competitive. Are your senior managers capable of facilitating this?

From a purely people perspective staff are likely to come into workforces very soon with next to no problem with modern, ever present IT. This trend is only going to increase. Unmanaged this could create a divide between different types of people, where the same staff are not able to be as productive in the simple, everyday tasks. In simplest terms, what if one set of employees could touch type and another not? Think what a gap in productivity that alone could cause.

For now your company needs to assess if they are even ready for today’s IT world. For most PC users things haven’t really changed all that much for the 5-10 years since a machine started appearing on each desk: most of the change has been for the IT team in streamlining the admin processes. However if your staff still look at you slightly strangely when asked to put the contents of a folder in a zip file or if they can access the internet through wi-fi at home, you may need to get them trained up, and fast! Asking the IT guy for help when he walks past the desk as a means to get the tougher things done won't wash as more and more of the workforce can do the tougher things by second nature and are able to move on even further in terms of productivity.

At Couraud we have started to run informal and basic training each Friday for all members of staff. "Keyboard shortcuts" was the first lesson and it proved to be very enlightening for those attending! We still run through the shortcuts in group meetings and people are getting much better and with it gaining more confidence. Since then we have covered simple tasks in Microsoft Word and Excel,  how to use Zip files, connect to wireless networks and search for information effectively. We are considering offering this kind of “get up to speed” training to other companies at some stage this year. Would anyone be interested in this form of training for your organisation or team? If so contact me on andrew.metcalfe@couraud.com.

If you think that some people will just never get computers, remember that the Queen was apparently using a Wii to play computer games on Christmas day and she is 81.

ANSWERS TO KEY COMBINATIONS:

1)      Cut, switch to last used program, paste

2)      Print