Employers: Minimum PC Knowledge is Needed

Back when I was in High School, I worked as a PC Salesperson at Best Buy. Over the summer, the department didn't have free hours for part timers, so I decided to help out as a Cashier for some extra cash. I will never forget the first few days of cashier training. At the end of the night, when totaling your register, you were required to sign the tape from the calculator, and it was filed away. There was a girl there who was training with me, and while being okay at the register itself, couldn't seem to grasp the calculator aspect. The Operations Manager told her in no uncertain terms that using the calculator was a part of her job, and that relying on others to stop and help her (or do it for her every night) was a waste of labor. Thusly, she would learn it, or she would leave.

Since then, I have worked in numerous different Help Desk and related PC Support positions. And the one thing that has consistently boggled my mind is how people who need to use a computer to do their job seem not only to think that they don't need to be able to understand it, but also that it's the Help Desk's job to handhold them through their daily tasks. I believe that a lot of companies haven't realized how much poor computer knowledge impacts their overall productivity.

Computers are relatively knew to the work scene. A huge amount of the work force didn't grow up with computers, and many of them use that as an excuse to not try to learn them, instead relying on other people. Sure, there are also those employees that would like to learn, but don't have the means to do so. Perhaps they can't afford basic computer classes, and their employer doesn't offer any on the job training, short of on certain proprietary applications.

When I've brought this up to employers in the past, it seems like there are two major arguments against this. The first is that they don't believe that there is a loss in productivity due to lack of knowledge. The second is that they feel that - for example - a good accountant with no computer skills is a better asset than a reasonably good accountant with superior computer skills.

I don't believe that employers realize how much productivity is lost by lack of knowledge. I can't count the number of times that I have asked someone to do a basic part of their job - schedule a meeting in Outlook, process an Invoice, etc. that should only take 2 minutes to do, and watch as they fumble through it for 20 minutes. And these aren't new employees either, in some cases these were employees that had been working with the same application for 5+ years. But they never actually learned, or were taught how the application works, they were just given a series of steps to follow, and if that series of steps fails, they just throw up their hands and call IT. Imagine if every task this employee has to do that should take 2 minutes is taking 20. Yes, they are doing their job, but in no way, shape or form as efficiently as their peers.

Beyond the time being wasted on their end is the IT time that they end up wasting as well. In my experience, and the experience of many of my friends in the field, the large majority of your callers are people who call in every day. In some environments that I have worked in 1% of the company has accounted for 50% of the IT tickets placed. Every company that I have worked for has at least one employee that forgets their password and needs a reset several times a week. But no company wants to either A: Label this employee incompetent and find another one, or B: Require that the employee receive computer instruction in order to better both themselves and the company as a whole.

The lack of accountability concerning IT is troubling. If I had a report to fill out that I completed incorrectly every week, my boss would likely take disciplinary action, especially if I showed no interest in trying to actually learn how to use it. At a previous job, though, we had an application for Payroll that needed to be processed once a week. And amazingly enough, the same people were making the same mistakes every week. We had step by step guides specifically telling them exactly what to do, and it was very common sense. If you enter in $0 for a pay rate, or 0 hours, the employee isn't going to get paid. If you close the application while it is transmitting, the data will not all transmit properly. And yet as Payroll day occurred every week, those same few called up, and wanted to yell at IT because people were getting $0 paychecks. After the issues of the week had been solved, we would send out an email giving instructions to prevent the situation from occurring again. Yet it never seemed to help.

Companies don't seem to realize how integral computers are to the jobs people do today. Many positions don't list any sort of Computer skill necessary, even for jobs that are extremely reliant on PCs. If I were to apply for an administrative assistant job, they would list "Multi-line Phone Operation" as a required skill. And if I showed up to work and didn't know that skill, and couldn't pick it up, they would get rid of me. But if the same position required extensive scheduling in Outlook, and every time I needed to schedule someone I had to call IT and have them help me, I would likely still maintain my employment.

Users that call IT for legitimate problems are often frustrated at how long they take to get resolved. Most Help Desks handle non-critical issues in the order they're received, which means that chances are if you're waiting for your PC to be fixed, you're waiting because Bob in account can't change the font size on his email, and Tracey from HR has forgotten her password for the 27th time this week.

If you're reading this and are one of the users who find computers scary and confusing, I have the following words of wisdom for you:

1. It's only scary because you keep telling yourself it is.

2. If you don't know something, Google it.

3. If your office doesn't offer training, start demanding it, and look into college courses.