Struggling to find time, a small legal practice had almost given up on staff training. It was simply not possible to be without their support staff for a day or two, even though the support staff really needed up-skilling.
The solution was a series of short lunch time training sessions in Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint, using their document management system. Each session was between one and one and a half hours long. The agreement was that staff gave up their lunch time and attended the training session instead. They were happy to do that: they were eager to learn and the practice organised a very tasty lunch for them.
Very quickly the sessions became so popular that even the senior partners and associates attended, voluntarily!
After the initial series, we started organising additional sessions as needed. We still conduct these sessions for them from time to time. The sessions have now been going for many years and the staff’s skill levels just keep growing.