Different options fordelivering Microsoft Office Training

Instructor-led MS Office Training is the most popular form of training delivery and the main reason is that ‘people like to be taught by people’. It is popular and effective because the trainer is leading the training, hopefully keeping everyone engaged, stimulated and focused whilst learning is being delivered and if anything is not understood then questions can be asked and hopefully answered.

Few organizations have training delivered for just the sole benefit of the delegates, there is always a reason for the training and always a bottom line. But what is the balance between best training and best value?

It is easy to see the cost/benefit logicof delivering MS Office training in a seminar to 500 rather than 8 delegates, however the greater the number the less effective the training – less interaction, more background noise less opportunity to ask questions and less delegate satisfaction.

There are other means and methods of delivering Microsoft Office training, 1-to-1 training allows an individual to have delivered to them a totally focused session with the trainer, perhaps alongside them at their desk, perhaps going through issues and problems on the files that they actually use at work. Usually one or two hours is enough for both the delegate - and the trainer as it can get very intense! The trainer can also deliver a whole series of 1-to-1’s going from delegate to delegate, with usually 5/6 people being seen per day.

Drop-in sessions for ‘anything and everything’ within MS Office training to more specific application like Microsoft Excel, MS Outlook or PowerPoint where a time and room are advertised within an organization and either people turn up if it is something they are interested in or someone administrates the process. In my experience these sessions seem like a great idea however they are usually under-subscribed.

Another type of training deliver is the workshop, which means that there is perhaps a specific topics like “Creating a template for PO’s” or “Mail Merging Christmas Card labels” and the Trainer leads the workshop with no formal agenda. It generally works best where everyone is from the same department or working in a particular role.

Remote Training is usually when the trainer is on the end of a phone to 1 or more delegates. Both sides of the phones need to be able to see the same screen using applications such as ‘Gotomeeting’ or ‘WebEx’ or ‘Join.me’. Whether training an application from the Microsoft Office suite of applications or anything else it can be instantly started so is often used in conjunction with a Help Desk or held at the same time every week to dial in your issues.

The final training type that can be utilized by organisations is ‘Blended’ training which is a mixture of Instructor-led,Seminars, E-and even Remote training. This of course the most costly to organise and deliver. However if done well, can be extremely comprehensive. One of its main advantages is that it can work all users and more importantly incorporate most of the different ways that people learn.

Microsoft Office - Training Advantages and Scope

The sheer variety of options and range of tasks that can be performed by MS Office can seem bewildering and potentially limitless. A typical comment about MS Offices that “nobody uses even 10% of MS Office!”

Nowadays, for the vast majority of organizations, Ms Office is the essential tool, to keep business functioning and moving forward.

The suite of MS Office core applications, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook are all apparently intuitive to use but end-users know that there is a lot more ‘under the hood’that could be utilized. If only there was more time during the busy work day to explore the potential of MS Office.

Training is therefore often seen as the way of improving the efficiency and skills of the workforce through delivering a deeper understanding of how these core applications work.

But what type of training? At what level? To whom? And when should it be delivered?

Most organizations have different types of training, IT, soft skills, Health & Safety and more. Whoever has to organize the training, needs to have a good understanding of what potential delegates might need, what their current level of knowledge is and what topics within the application would be useful – so the person organizing the training needs to have an excellent knowledge of Outlook, Excel, Word and PowerPoint or be able quiz an expert who can then tailor training to provide focus to the training courses in order to deliver targeted training towards the needs of the delegates as well as the needs of the business as a whole.

So what aspects should one look for in the different applications that the delegates and the business need to be trained?

MS Outlook – The application for dealing with E-mails and more. Unless you have never used it before the training is often focused on the many tools and utilities available for creating content and/or dealing with the multitude ofe-mails received, making delegates more efficient and effective using Outlook. Also how to effectively manage calendaring – sending and receiving invitations for meeting and viewing other peoples’ calendars.

MS Excel – The numbering crunching application. A lot of people are a little bit intimidated by MS Excel. By understanding the basics such as operator precedence and formatting, then learning how to input and then how to wrangle data, doing lots of clever stuff with formulas and Functions, analyzing data and then displaying the data using Tables and Pivot Tables or visual tools like Conditional Formatting and Charts.

MS Word – Undoubtedly the most misunderstood application. It is far, far too easy to use this application in completely the wrong way. Ever had paragraphs moving around by themselves? Are you typing in complex numbering schema or Table of Contents? You might need a course on building blocks, templates and the ins and outs of styles to really ‘nail’ that formatting.

MS PowerPoint – The application to present your message. Easy-ish to use, but does your company use templates to standardize the way presentations look? Be aware of the security pitfalls of copying charts from Excel, applying transitions and animations effects to slides and objects and know the many useful shortcuts available to you while actually presenting including how to annotate on the ‘live’ presentation.