Onboarding New Users
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Hello everyone!
I am looking for best ways to bring newly hired people into the Wrike sphere. There are many individual training modules available, but not a "0 to 100" guide or method of onboarding and training new users in Wrike.
Previous threads like this are a great start, but put the onus of training new users onto an internal team member. Sometimes, companies do not have a person who is great at teaching others. Or there is no time to dedicated the mentor and the mentee to the same training material at the same time.
Having recently gone through onboarding myself, I had no choice but to take self-guided learning via the training videos, then onto two certifications from Wrike, and, of course, much trial and error. Took a few months to get comfortable in Wrike and its advanced features.
Now, I am trying to make some kind of plan for everyone that is hired in the future. Especially for those that are less comfortable with technology in general.
So, how does your company handle onboarding new members? Any tips or projects that help an individual get up to speed as soon as possible?
Any advice is appreciated! ☺️
Hi Michael
from my experience onboarding with the Wrike standard videos does not work. This is good to inform yourself as admin about general capabilities of Wrike, but for normal users this does not work. Teh problem is that Wrike is very customizable (on the one hand good to adopt to your processes, on the other hand bad as you can change very much).
So what we did is a short introduction to evry new user via a meeting (just somebody telling with standard slides). Furthermore each team has a Wrike Champion to give on-hand introduction and help.
I think the most important are our How Toes. We made Power Point presentations with click by click guide. E.g. How to make a task, How to applie for a project, How to lead a project, ... So everybody can extract from such knowledgebase the specific topic he needs. That is much better than one big teaching course. And it is very important that the How Toes are specific fitting to our process (where are the folders, which rights does somebody have, our workflows, ...).
At the end we had a big survey last year what problems people have with Wrike. The result is a huge Excelsheet with topics and a monthly meeting where alle important issues we get knwoledge off via the survey or via talking are addresses.
It is a lot of work, but without Wrike is much to complicate for most users.
Depending on your subscription level, there might be some available time with a Wrike consultant in your contract. Separately, you might be able to find funds to acquire some time with a consultant. The consultant might be able to help design training or provide the training. A small group from our organization was able to meet a number of times with a consultant who helped us identify and develop training needs.
I've done some trial-by-fire for onboarding my team. However, the entire team is relatively small (15 people) and I've made myself available to them, with frequent, unannounced check-ins to see how they are getting along in Wrike. This partially worked, as most team members had 1 Space to learn with 1 functional goal. It probably isn't ideal for larger teams. However, the aspect that makes this semi-successful (and I'm definitely still improving) is micro-training or reference materials in each space. There are specific how-to guides that explain the purpose, design, and function of each space. Here's a screenshot below.
This is pretty similar to what Sven shared, creating specific training guides to help instruct people on how-to perform specific tasks. The idea of collecting an annual usage and problem survey is an awesome idea. That's a great continual improvement tool. In general, small just-in-time training is most effective. Give people the knowledge they need right before they need it. It'll help it stick when they learn it and then use it immediately.
So many great ideas!
Sven Passinger - The monthly meetings regarding all submitted questions and concerns are an awesome idea! Now only if there was more time on the calendar haha.
Eric Fiero - I did not know that the consultant meeting was even an option. Thanks for suggesting that direction!
Mike Fank - The screenshot you shared is worth a thousand words. As a visual learner it helped me quantify your advice. Appreciate it!
Hopefully together we can get new hires onboarded quicker than before. Best of luck to us all!
Michael We were able to do it because of our account, not sure what the process looks like otherwise. Good luck!
Dear Michael, I can only recommend: excuses with "I do not have time for training" do not count. If your management agrees with this statement: good. If not: start searching for another employer. Without training the people, everybody will blame you why Wrike is not working. (this is not a specific Wrike problem, but a general thing with every software and also with every other knowledge you want to introduce in a company. If you do not train the people they will not become better and at some point the company will crash)
Hi Michael we have onboarded around 300 people now and know very well the challenges of this. When we first rolled out Wrike we met with each team to provide an overview and initial training session we then had many follow up sessions. After the initial roll out we decided to create our own Wrike online training session which was customised to our organisation. We send this to each new user as well as links to all the training on the Wrike pages and links to our Knowledge base folder in Wrike. We have created a lot of 'How to' guides and hints and tips within our 'Knowledge base' folder in Wrike. We constantly add to this and make it specific to what we use Wrike for. Since we have so many different teams using Wrike we sometimes need to offer customised training for that area - we have found now that people are becoming more sophisticated in Wrike we are needing to offer more training on some of the more advanced features.
We have a power user network and I post updates, feature highlights and hints and tips to that group on a regular basis. We have also provided what we called a 'Power User' summit in the past where we had advanced training sessions and deep dive into features. The idea is that the power users take this knowledge back to their teams to share.
One thing we have found is our Wrike usage is constantly evolving and changing so I try to keep our training materials up to date.
Good luck!
I typically spend 2-3 hours with each new team member. I ask each stakeholder their experience with any PM software. 8 times out of 10, the answer is minimal experience. I explain what a project is from a technical standpoint according to the PMI, followed by going over a live project based on where the new hire will be "living". From there, I show the new hire the list view, explain what a milestone is and the difference between a milestone, task, and subtask. Then, I give a detailed analysis of what the item view is, including all functions and capabilities within the item view. Then, I explain the different viewpoints and touch over different dashboards and reports that can be generated.
If the person I'm onboarding, I am giving detailed overviews of dashboards and reports, explaining project health/risk and the calculations associated with project risk/health. After the crash course (usually completed on days 1-5), I implement a 90-day check-in to go over pain points or questions that the user has.