Staff Training

 

Mandy Pethick and Debra Mann were tasked with creating and delivering a training program to all staff. This was their schedule in the two months leading up to the launch.

 

·       developed training materials specific to Innisfil Public Library

 

·       held a 3-hour demonstration, with small group breakouts and practice exercises, during our regular monthly staff meeting

 

·       created a Sharepoint space for staff use, which included e-copies of manuals and worksheets, as well as Wink tutorials for more complex transactions (patron registration, for example)

 

·       sent out regular emails with additional training materials attached throughout the course of the next month as 'nudges' to remind staff members to practice

 

·       distributed paper copies of the manual to all branches

 

On the week before the launch:

·       made sure each circulation employee received a short 'debriefing' session, either in small groups or when necessary on a one-on-one basis, to review common transactions and answer questions.

 

·       trainers were at the Lakeshore and Stroud branches when they opened at 10:00 am to help get things off the ground, and then went to Cookstown and Churchill branches when they opened at 1:00 pm.

 

 

·       acted as 'point people' for questions and suggestions; facilitated communication between circulation and IT staff, and compiled information for both staff dissemination and policy/procedure considerations at the management level.

 

·       sent out an anonymous training survey using SurveyMonkey to determine effectiveness of training.  For our staff members, the three hour session and the one-on-one and practice times were the most useful, while the content we put on the Sharepoint site was judged the least useful because it was password-protected and some had difficulty accessing it from home.  Staff suggested that they would have benefited from scheduled practice time off the circulation desk, as they found when they were taking practice opportunities on the desk they weren't able to concentrate.

 

·       held a review session to go over things that had proven complicated or generated a large number of questions during the launch period; we used it as an opportunity to teach a few new tricks we'd learned and take any further questions or comments.