Computer Support Blog

For someone to move from being a basic/casual user of IT to being competent, this requires IT skills which take you beyond traditional technical training to training that is designed with your work environment in mind.

During recent IT workshops in Milton Keynes, London and in the North-West of England, aimed at helping to support the effective IT use of people using computers at work, we notice that the following features and services of Office and Windows are underutilised or are frustrating to the user - basic Keyboard shortcuts, to avoid using the mouse; lack of awareness of shortcuts in Outlook - for example, for managing emails and appointments and insufficient familiarity with styles and templates in Word to save time formatting documents which are regularly used.

Let’s deal first with the technical support side of things. One of the most noteworthy facts is that considering the large number of individuals involved in providing services, products, support and information to other people, many do not have the requisite email organisation and a clear structure for files. This is easily remedied by providing highly focused, targeted and specific IT skills training aimed at supporting the daily work environment so that it is less chaotic and more organised. This training is provided by CertainIT to its SME and corporate customers. What we find in our training is that most people do not seem to pay attention to key features of an effective daily work environment. Examples of poor practices include:

• Emails sitting in inboxes and being opened, closed and opened randomly without replying. We refer to this as ‘the eternally opening email’ or EOE for short.
• Emails not being converted into tasks, contacts, appointments with much retyping taking place. This adds to the number of emails that are sitting in the inbox.
• Signatures not being uniformly applied.
• Folders being stored on hard disk drives in a haphazard structure with lots of wasted time spent looking for files.
• Email rules not being used.

The skill of time management is an important one for ensuring that the usage of IT is optimal. Time management skills operate at five different levels as regards IT.

Level 1 - FUNDAMENTALS. this is the most basic level that ensures that you actually take time to do important things using computers - paying the bills, doing the accounts, following up with new customers.

Level 2 - BROAD FOCUS is where you cover the basics but you also know broadly what your key main chunks of time are - e.g. It SIPPORT FAMILY, WORK - MARKETING, WORK - WRITING, WORK - FINANCIALS and INTERESTs for instance.

Level 3 - BUSINESS PRIORITIES is where you are not only focused on your broad areas, but you have actually converted these into Outlook Folders and hard disk drive folders which reflect your key priorities in life.

Level 4 - LIFE GOALS is where you are focused on the main priorities in both your work life and your home life. In our training programmes we encourage people to write down their three main work challenges and their three main home challenges and to then plan their time around these, working with their calendar, emails and folders to reflect these. This provides a high level of detail in what can be produced in the way of management information - e.g. how much time you have spent on each of your key priorities.

Level 5 - LEGACY is where you are not only clear on your priorities but you are also clear about the very most important things that you want to be known for and to make a difference in this lifetime. It is our experience that most people are not yet ready for living their lives with this degree of clarity.

In conclusion, the effective use of IT support services and IT in general requires the user to not only be competent in their use of computers but to also be competent in time management.