Impacts of not optimising software functionality

The knock-on effects of staff not using the software functionality can be detrimental.
When staff do not use software effectively, productivity decreases with increased frustration.
These issues, alongside procrastination, loss of time and increased expenses have impacts on your organisation.
How do these issues impact your organisation?

Loss of Productivity

Computer software, such as Microsoft, has features to make your life easier. For example, you can quickly change the case with two keys: Shift+F3.
It is as simple as selecting your text and toggling between different cases using Shift+F3.

If you don't know this shortcut what is the alternative? To delete all the text to retype in the correct case? That will consume even more of your time.
Imagine all the shortcuts you are not utilising and how that impacts your productivity. Now multiply that loss of productivity business-wide.
This exacerbated loss of productivity has a detrimental impact on your organisation because of a frustrating and inadvertent efficiency issue.

Increased Frustrations

Have you felt frustrated waiting long periods for a project progress report? Or frustrated with the tediousness of compiling another quarterly report in excel? 
If your staff don't know how to effectively use software these frustrations are quite common. To reduce these frustrations, and avoid procrastination, a culture of continuous learning needs to be implemented.

Constant Procrastination

If your staff are dreading the thought of spending hours creating another document, imagine how many tasks are being delayed. It is easier to put a complicated task in the too hard basket until you are approaching a deadline.
Where does that procrastination lead? More frustrations and a lack of productivity that both amount to wasted time.

Wasted Time

When software skills are not maintained through training and consistent practice, tasks take longer to complete.
This increase in task duration results from putting off tasks until the last minute and by not utilising shortcuts.
Rather, a ‘quick’ Google search or asking a colleague is required to complete the task; only consuming more valuable resources.

These reactive procedures waste time, compounding frustrations. Especially because you know that increased time can result in exceeded budgets.

Expenditure

Software licenses can be a large expense to an organisation. The consequential costs of not optimising software features and procrastination inflate expenses.
Maintaining your staff’s knowledge and skills of effective software use is vital to observe a return on investment of software costs.

How to Optimise Software Functionality

To overcome (or avoid) these common issues, there are two main recommendations.

Continuous Learning

What is continuous learning?

Continuous learning is ongoing training to build (and maintain) new skills and abilities. The training can be formal or informal, professional or personal, trainer-led or self-directed. Regardless, these are opportunities for your staff to improve their productivity and proficiency. There are many other benefits to continuous learning, such as improved memory. For example, if you learn a shortcut in excel and use it once, how likely are you to remember the shortcut in 3 months time?
Probably very unlikely. However, when you continuously learn and practice, the likelihood of you remembering these shortcuts increases.

How can you build a culture of continuous learning?

Building a culture of learning is not an easy task. This is not a once-off training session to design and deliver in an hour-long period. This is the culture of encouraging staff to be self-motivated in their learning.
With tight budgets on training, this is not always realistic. Yet, subscriptions to Training as a Service takes the pressure off financial considerations. This allows you to focus on delivering professional development.

Opportunities for Practice

Why is providing opportunities for practice important?

As you can see in the above example, once-off training does not have the longevity that continuous learning provides.
Part of continuous learning is to provide opportunities for practice. This practice is important for your staff to retain knowledge and improve productivity in software tasks.
Without opportunities for practice, software training can become a waste of time and money. Not to mention the decrease in motivation to attend such training sessions.

How can you provide opportunities for practice?

Opportunities to practice new skills can be provided in the workplace through many ways.
Once training has been completed, allocate new tasks to your staff to practice new skills attained.
For example, you organise a training session on creating pivot tables in excel. Immediately after the training session, you can assign staff members tasks that require them to create pivot tables.
Of course, you do not want to increase their workload nor their frustrations. Keep this activity aligned with their roles or consider a collaboration of activities with peers.
The practice of a new skill increases the retention rate, this does not always necessarily need to be physical practice. Reminding the student of the new skill and how it can be applied can also be sufficient.
Here is an example of a useful email to follow pivot table training:
“Do you have time sensitive data that needs to be refreshed frequently in your pivot table?
You don’t need to rely on manual refresh, that is what a machine is for.

Follow these steps to refresh your pivot table at intervals:

1. Create the PivotTable as usual using the Insert > PivotTable command.
2. In the PivotTable dialog box, check the Add this data to the Data Model option.
3. Click OK and set out the PivotTable.
4. Click into the PivotTable to activate the PivotTable.
5. Click the Data tab
6. Select Properties in the Queries & Connections group.
7. In the Connection Properties dialog box, check Refresh every and set the number of minutes for your refresh schedule.
8. Click OK.

Done! Your Pivot Table will now automatically refresh every number of minutes you assigned.

How many millions of minutes will that save you?!”

This is an excerpt from the Saving a Million Minutes email series from Corporate Training Solutions Australia (CTSA). Subscribe here to receive more time saving emails like this.

However, opportunities for practice and these time saving emails are not enough alone. You and your staff need to create a culture of continuous learning where tips are shared and applied through collaboration. 
This collaboration can lead to improved productivity, decreased frustrations and optimisation of software use; decreasing your expenses. 
A culture of continuous learning is the key for your staff to retain skills acquired in training sessions. Without the opportunity to practice these skills, the impacts can be detrimental from a loss of productivity to inflated expenses.

To implement continuous learning in your organisation, check out the Training as a Service CTSA provides.