How to Train Your Employees to Use SharePoint Effectively

Microsoft SharePoint is a platform, used to create a wide range of websites and applications, which has steadily seen increased adoption in the enterprise market. More and more companies are coming to use this platform as a secure place to organize, store, share and access important information from any device. SharePoint is very popular because it comes with unique features and benefits that make it extremely powerful.

Despite its many excellent attributes, there are heavy challenges and obstacles to properly implementing SharePoint in the office. In fact, according to a recent survey, 28% of SharePoint users had stalled their implementation progress altogether, while 1/3 said they were struggling to implement it.  In addition to security concerns as it relates to storing data in the Cloud, a central challenge to successful adoption and implementation is that difficulty of use, and of training employees on how to operate the software.

Here, we’ll explain these challenges and provide insights into how you can best train your employees and co-workers to properly use SharePoint.

The Big Challenge 

As a business manager, you need to properly train your coworkers to correctly use SharePoint. Within each organization, a huge challenge managers face is helping workers familiarize and use new software which they have not used before. On the average, people remember only 20% of what they learn during formal training sessions, so you need to find more practical solutions to help your employees and co-workers remember what they’ve learned about SharePoint.

The Importance of Great Training

First of all, you need to ensure that the training is done in a professional manner. In order to do that, there are 5 extremely important aspects you need to take into consideration: find the right location (whether it is indoor or outdoor, make sure the environment is a conductive one), make each training session unique and interesting, make training relevant and, of course, and to take full advantage of technological advancements, such as using audiovisuals strategies, music, videos, and capitalizing on e-learning or m-learning tools.

Of course, training is vital, but what should you do next? There are 3 important things you need to do after holding initial SharePoint training, in order to provide a successful follow-up strategy and maximize performance:

Crucial Post-Training Steps:

#1. Properly Evaluate the Training

First and foremost, make sure to evaluate the results. Study the original objectives of the training and ensure that they have been met. Define exactly what knowledge about SharePoint has been given to your employees and then assess if they have the ability to put what they’ve learned into practice. The objectives that have not been met leave the need for strategizing later improvement.

#2. Get Feedback Often

You need to get employee feedback. This is the best way to ensure that they have understood how SharePoint works and how it can be used at its full capacity. Also, monitor employee SharePoint skills over the course of several months in order to ensure they properly apply what they’ve learned.

#3. Provide Post-Training Performance Support

Initial training session are just that, initial. The real work of really mastering how to operate a software continues during the actual work processes that employees are hired to perform. There are several software options available – WalkMe being perhaps the best example – that allow managers to empower SharePoint users to receive step-by-step guidance onscreen at the time they are actually working. So it directly ties training to performance, and allows users to immediately apply what they have learned. Makes sense, right?

Conclusion

SharePoint is an extremely powerful tool and learning how to use it is not such a daunting task. If your employees can grasp how it works, they will be able to do more tasks in a shorter period of time, thus improving productivity and increasing profits. Train them properly and you will certainly reap the benefits offered by this software.

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Marissa Hart is the Lead Author & Editor ShareMe. ShareMe is a blog focused on SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online delivers the powerful features of SharePoint without the associated overhead of managing the infrastructure.