I understand that as experienced ISP/hosting company owners, we normally know who exactly to choose based on their initial impression, resume and knowledge of the industry. However, some people have a different approach at hiring!

Would anyone here happen to use a manual to accompany their employees while starting with the company? If so, what exactly does it contain? My reason for asking is I'm assisting someone (now don't get me wrong, I've wrote a load) but I'd love to get some ideas and here about what others put content wise, into their training manual.

Thank you in advanced for the responses.

:agree:

Keep it simple and uncomplicated. You dont want them to read an essay. Give them a little credit on being intelligent, afterall your not going to employ a complete idiot...

Other then general process manuals, ie, To make X do A B C D, I've found personalised training works best.

I have 3 Full time staff and 1 part-time.. When I took them on, it was on the understanding that they might not know anything about hosting, but are skilled in various areas that as a team will contribute to building my business..

ISP/Hosting can be learned from peoples experience/knowledge so as part of the training, I've found meshing heads is better then taking one point of view from a single trainer... We all have knowledge in certain areas, sometimes it will clash with others, which is why I find group discussions more insightful and people learn how to think as a team.

The key thing is to know what they can and cannot do. You soon get an idea where to focus the training. All my guys have worked up to aleast an MCP (one in training for one) so its place to start, working towards industry certification.

We use an internal wiki (Mediawiki). Everybody makes a habit of writing down the basic processes we go through to complete our work (filling orders, setting up a site, etc).

The wiki is constantly evolving and allows shared notes/comments when something isn't clear to someone.

You could also implement a simple knowledgebase and add an article anytime you're asked a question more than once by your staff. Send someone the link to the article rather than putting yourself on repeat. You can also do this with the wiki. It's an easy, habitual way to ensure you're not fielding the same questions over and over (internally or externally).

We use sharepoint to colaberate between staff, i'm not always in the office so its good way of sharing files on the move.

We use sharepoint to colaberate between staff, i'm not always in the office so its good way of sharing files on the move.
That's something I haven't had too much experience with really. I'll look into that and see what it's like. Doesn't Outlook have some sort of feature like that in it? In addition, I appreciate your detailed initial reply.

We use an internal wiki (Mediawiki). Everybody makes a habit of writing down the basic processes we go through to complete our work (filling orders, setting up a site, etc).
I have seen this done before and it's pretty good idea. Isn't it a bit confusing to guide staff through it when there are always changes being made though?

Office 2007 completely integrates with sharepoint so you can actually publish documents directly and edit them on the fly, check them out to stop others, or even have several people work on the same doc. Its a little complicated to setup but we've now rolled it out for a few customers, sharepoint portals, and currently working doing hosted sharepoint for our hosting control panel.

We use an internal wiki (MediaWiki) and it works well. Any time someone needs to do something, they look it up on the wiki. You can also see recent changes to the wiki by clicking a special link.

In terms of updates, I did find some people were keeping printouts of certain frequent tasks on their desks, so I email them when there's an important change in those tasks (this is rare).

The main benefit of using a wiki is it's quick and simple.

we are going to build our internal wiki too, and wondering which one is the best suitable for this purpose?

We're developing a customer knowledge base, for help guides / useful info etc.. The system we're developing pulls info out of sharepoint, converts into HTML and made searchable for our customers to access on our website. in early days but it works quite well. Just need to add the content - which is the boring part.

I have seen [a collaborative wiki] done before and it's pretty good idea. Isn't it a bit confusing to guide staff through it when there are always changes being made though?

And isn't it a bit confusing when a printed guide doesn't change? ;)

We're a bit progressive, but what we ended up doing was setting up everybody with FeedDemon (an RSS reader in the tray) and subscribing them to the feeds for "Wiki Recent Changes" and "FAQ Updates". The benefit of using a separate feed reader than the one they're using for blogs/news (Google Reader) is that they can use it as a checklist for being informed.

Even if someone is just skimming through the latest changes, it usually plants a reminder in their brain for when a related problem or question comes up.

I use two version of a staff manual. I have one online in a restricted area with an in depth FAQ and staff board. However I also did write a 20 page "Intro to Being a Spunky Staff Member" manual. I highly highly recommend that you take the time to do this. We have one for each department and it basically outlines how to run the software [that they will be using], how we want them to interact with the users (including screenshots of example conversations), troubleshooting an issue, reporting a problem to their managers and overall "how to handle this situation" type scenarios.

Its been so valuable, especially the software tutorial because it helps lessen the amount of training time needed.

I use two version of a staff manual. I have one online in a restricted area with an in depth FAQ and staff board. However I also did write a 20 page "Intro to Being a Spunky Staff Member" manual. I highly highly recommend that you take the time to do this. We have one for each department and it basically outlines how to run the software [that they will be using], how we want them to interact with the users (including screenshots of example conversations), troubleshooting an issue, reporting a problem to their managers and overall "how to handle this situation" type scenarios.

Its been so valuable, especially the software tutorial because it helps lessen the amount of training time needed.
That's what I had in mind for the most part.

Employees would have access to a more in depth knowledgebase than our clients do (ex: it would use my technical jargon and contain links to running a DNS report, etc.) and a "customer service" type manual to distribute to the employees.

What I do is I (on a reacurring basis) write down questions that were odd and out of the usual. Today I had someone ask what ip we are using so he can ping it. So then I never thought to put our ip on our sales manual so I added it. I may add 1-2 things a week but its getting good.

I use two version of a staff manual. I have one online in a restricted area with an in depth FAQ and staff board. However I also did write a 20 page "Intro to Being a Spunky Staff Member" manual. I highly highly recommend that you take the time to do this. We have one for each department and it basically outlines how to run the software [that they will be using], how we want them to interact with the users (including screenshots of example conversations), troubleshooting an issue, reporting a problem to their managers and overall "how to handle this situation" type scenarios.

Mike: which software/scripts are you using? Or just creating pages of manual?

What I do is I (on a reacurring basis) write down questions that were odd and out of the usual. Today I had someone ask what ip we are using so he can ping it. So then I never thought to put our ip on our sales manual so I added it. I may add 1-2 things a week but its getting good.
I believe you're doing FAQ for your customers. Meanwhile it's good for new staff too, but we have more info for internal staff :)

O yes i do

I like to train up my own employees if they are only handling level 1 or 2 support, this means they are cheaper to pay per hour becuase they had no previous or little experience. One of the first things i do is give them a learning manual.

xxen

Mike: which software/scripts are you using? Or just creating pages of manual?

Do you mean what software did I use to make the manual? If so I just used MS Word :). I took a lot of screenshots of my hosting software and used Photoshop to make markings on those screenshots. It took me about a two weeks or so to make but it's definitely been worth the time.