One of the biggest technology challenges companies face when implementing and deploying new tools is adoption. Ensure employees are properly trained and are consistently reinforced to use the technology so your company can truly maximize the results of its new collaboration tool.

Tony McQueen, Senior Director of Collaboration, weighs in on a TechDecisions article about two important considerations when adding new tech to your environment.

Engage End-User Before Purchasing New Technology

There’s nothing worse than integrating new technology into your business and facilitating comprehensive training sessions only to learn later that your employees aren’t fully utilizing the new tech. For this reason, it’s important to engage your users for feedback before the technology is chosen. What we’ve seen in the past are IT decision makers choosing a certain type of equipment—like a telephone headset–purely for financial reasons, then roll it out and discover that the employees don’t like the way the headsets fit or feel. In this example, Carousel recommends setting up a demo prior to the purchase of the equipment offering employees an opportunity to try on a variety of headsets to gauge their preferences. With their input, an IT manager can rest assured that the headset chosen for the staff will be fully utilized—and that training on the new phone system will be worthwhile. IT decision makers need to move away from everything being 100 percent an IT decision. If you don’t first find out what’s working for employees, what’s not, and what types of tools they wish they had, training will become a moot point.

Embrace a Long(ish) Learning Curve

Some employees are eager to embrace new technologies. Training this type of person won’t take long. For those who harbor skepticism about the implementation of new tech, training could take much longer. Getting folks to change their workflow and habits is the biggest challenge when it comes to training. It takes us about three weeks to build and have employees embrace a routine for something simple (like a new email program); it could take three months to a year for employees to fully utilize and maximize a larger more complex tech addition.

To read more about ways to effectively train and keep employees engaged in new technology and tools, read the original article here.

• adoption, 
• deployment, 
• tech acoption, 
• UC&C. collaboration