Train early, train often – part 2

Introduction

In the first half of this two-part series, we argued that structured Excel training still had an important role to play in improving productivity despite the wealth of free resources available on the Internet and via AI.

This time, we will concentrate on the when of training rather than the if.

I wish you hadn’t taught me that

Over the years spent training accountants to use Excel and other office applications there have been many memorable incidents. One that made a particular impression occurred during a PowerPoint training session but the point behind it applies much more generally. I was covering the use of master slides to include the same formatting and information on all the slides in a presentation. I used as an example the inclusion of an organisation logo in the same place on every slide. I could see the colour in the face of one of the delegates gradually drain and they started beating their fist rhythmically on their keyboard. Once they had recovered their composure, I asked them what the problem was. Apparently, they had spent many hours in the previous week painstakingly adding the organisation logo in exactly the same place on 39 separate slides, a job that they now knew they could have done in 5 minutes.

This experience was far from unusual. In fact, probably some of the most common comments I ever received at the end of a training course were along the lines of “if only I’d known that 5 days/months/years ago it would have saved me weeks”. Several of the firms I worked for organised training on Excel, and sometimes also Word, a couple of times a year as part of the induction process for new recruits. This had the considerable advantage of ensuring that all recruits had a baseline level of knowledge. This was particularly important because each new intake included employees with very different levels of existing expertise. Some had plenty of spreadsheet experience and others almost none, but even amongst those with plenty of relevant experience it was very rare to find anyone who had had any formal Excel training at all.

Often, I felt that those who needed the training most were those who had already used spreadsheets a lot and were often clearly sceptical about the need to listen to some old bloke tell them what they clearly believed they already knew. It was often true that they had considerable knowledge of many Excel features and functions. However, invariably they had never really considered how they could ensure that their spreadsheet not only generated the correct answer but also had a decent chance of continuing to generate the correct answer once the spreadsheet was unleashed on other users. Conversely, those with little existing knowledge were often much more enthusiastic about attending the course in the first place and were more receptive to understanding the importance of applying sensible design principles compared to doing just getting a result as quickly as possible.

It’s never over

We’ve made the argument for initial training, but it’s also important that training isn’t seen as a one off. New features are appearing in Excel almost every month. Regular refresher courses can help provide awareness of new features but, more importantly, directed training can help identify those updates that are most relevant to particular groups or individuals.

To take a couple of specific examples, for many users of the VLOOKUP() function, the amount of time and effort they could save by switching to the replacement XLOOKUP() function might well outweigh any time and cost invested in their refresher training. Of even greater importance, although it’s far from a recent enhancement, there are many Excel users whose life would be revolutionised by the use of Power Query, but who have not come across it. Even those who have discovered the existence of Power Query often see it just as a tool for acquiring and manipulating large, external data sources rather than appreciating its importance as a general automation tool.

Conclusion

Although inappropriate training can just be a waste of everyone’s time, properly researched and targeted training can make a massive contribution to increased productivity and the avoidance of material spreadsheet errors and mistakes.

Additional resources

The Excel Community provides access to a range of training resources and events (disclaimer: I have been involved in the creation of some of these resources):

• Events and training 

As well as the solution to many specific Excel and office software problems, you can also find plenty of articles on updates and enhancements in the Power BI based ICAEW Excel archive portal:

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