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People are critical assets that must be carefully developed to maximize results. Deepen your education on best practices for acquiring essential skills, organizing the IT department, and increasing staff productivity.

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Articles: Staff Productivity
September 23, 2008	Ideal Staffing Mix Tool Protect against attrition, and ensure that staffing requirements are met, by using the McLean Report “Ideal Staffing Mix Tool” to determine the optimal distribution of junior, intermediate and senior level staff.
September 9, 2008	An Agile Approach to Strained Workforces Creating an agile workforce involves examining tasks, skills, and staff from a variety of angles to really understand how they fit together. Adopting an agile approach will ensure that the right skills are available at the right time. Follow this seven step process to keep pace in a rapidly changing IT environment and increase the efficiency of IT staff.
September 9, 2008	Workforce Agility Calculator Ability to respond to changing business needs is imperative to IT success, especially in light of pending economic changes. How agile are your individual staff members? Find out using this agility calculator.
August 26, 2008	Coach Problem Employees to Success As managers progress in an organization, more and more of their time is spent dealing with people problems instead of technical or operational problems. To get the most out of employees, managers must be able to coach them to better performance.
August 26, 2008	Coaching Tracking Sheet Coaching an employee can take place in a formal meeting or in an informal, ad-hoc manner. It is easy to lose track of what was communicated during these coaching sessions, be they for educational or disciplinary purposes. Use this tool to document all coaching sessions with staff and build a multi-year historic record.
August 26, 2008	Boosting Productivity During an Economic Downturn During an economic slowdown, fear of a recession or budget cuts can take the focus off of constant improvement and negatively impact productivity when it is most needed. Stay focused on creating value by following these five simple steps.
August 12, 2008	When Is it the Right Time to Coach? The benefits of applying coaching techniques in business settings have been widely publicized. However, coaching can be risky if it is applied in instances where it is inappropriate - it can prove to be disempowering and uninspiring. Follow this guide to learn when it is appropriate to use coaching techniques to improve employee performance.
August 12, 2008	Find Economical Ways to Save Employee Training With an economic downturn underway, IT departments are looking for ways to cut costs fast. Unfortunately, one of the first items to go is training. Info-Tech recommends finding economical ways to fit training into a tight budget instead of cutting training all together.
June 3, 2008	Help Desk Support for Teleworkers Teleworking has specific help desk challenges that must be addressed and accounted for in the project planning stage of the program. Doing so will prevent the help desk from being inundated by teleworker support requests and help mitigate teleworker performance and frustration issues.
May 6, 2008	Infrastructure Basics for Teleworking Companies need to define their basic teleworking requirements and make sure they are adhered to. To improve the effectiveness of IT support for teleworkers, companies should standardize the equipment and software they use.
March 11, 2008	Is the Current IT Organization Structure Right for Today's Business? The organizational structure of IT, effective in the past, can become insufficient to support the needs of enterprises that are growing or diversifying. Recognize which recent or planned business changes could stress the current IT organization structure and then take corrective action.
June 19, 2007	Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers Look Out: The Net Generation Is Here! The next generation of knowledge worker has a decidedly different take on information use, communication, and the work environment itself. Tapping into the psyche of these forward-thinking employees can unlock new innovations and productivity benefits; failure to understand their needs will lead to employee dissatisfaction and costly turnover.
January 30, 2007	Redefining Acceptable Use As Worlds Collide Worlds are colliding. The lines are blurring between personal time and time spent "at work." The growth of wireless connectivity and mobile computing is making working from home or while on the road a reality for many employees.
August 22, 2006	Prepare the Enterprise Network to Accept Employee-Owned Devices End-user devices that improve staff productivity and mobility also serve the personal needs of their users. Reduce enterprise equipment and support costs for mobile and home devices by leveraging equipment employees already have. Prepare the IT infrastructure to support devices selected and owned by staff rather than by the enterprise.
April 18, 2006	Prove the Value of Training Initiatives Many managers struggle with how to validate these initiatives in terms of business value. Info-Tech's "ROI Calculator for Corporate Training" quantifies the value and helps enterprises prioritize training initiatives.
March 7, 2006	Help IT Staff Navigate Technology Change Managing change to the organization's tech strategy is a difficult task. Minimize IT employee resistance to new technology adoption by developing solid support and training plans.
January 10, 2006	Flu Season: Plan for Staffing Gaps Although the avian flu has yet to transition to pandemic status, regular strains of influenza promise to reduce worker attendance this winter. Ensure that plans compensate for widespread illness among staff.
October 18, 2005	Call Center Quality Essential to Revenue Growth Call centers are traditionally viewed as expensive necessities. As customer expectations and competitive behaviors in all market sectors continue to intensify, the shift to more quality-oriented call centers becomes a greater imperative to today’s mid-sized enterprises.
August 23, 2005	Multiple Monitors Increase Productivity, Reduce Errors Multiple monitor configurations are common among programmers, CAD operators, and graphic designers. They are becoming increasingly popular among other workers. Give multiple monitors to knowledge workers to increase their productivity by 10% and decrease their error rates by over 25%.
February 8, 2005	Instant Messaging Technology giveth. It also taketh away. And guess which one happens more often? When I first installed instant messaging software on my computer about six or seven years ago, I was blown away by its apparent utility. Because of its immediacy, it was like email on steroids.
January 25, 2005	Increase Staff Efficiency with Onboarding IT plays a critical support role in getting new employees equipped for day one. As an IT thought leader in your organization, you can help speed the return on investment your company has made in recruiting. Find out how.
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Templates & Policies: Staff Productivity

Coaching Tracking Sheet
Coaching an employee can take place in a formal meeting or in an informal, ad-hoc manner. It is easy to lose track of what was communicated during these coaching sessions, be they for educational or disciplinary purposes. Use this tool to document all coaching sessions with staff and build a multi-year historic record.
Ideal Staffing Mix Tool
Protect against attrition, and ensure that staffing requirements are met, by using the McLean Report “Ideal Staffing Mix Tool” to determine the optimal distribution of junior, intermediate and senior level staff.
Workforce Agility Calculator
Ability to respond to changing business needs is imperative to IT success, especially in light of pending economic changes. How agile are your individual staff members? Find out using this agility calculator.