Peer to Peer Magazine

42 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | WINTER 2017 FEATURES Mastering Management: Streamlining New Hire and Content Delivery that would appear on their learning path) so only paralegal new hires would see it, and aach paralegal parameters (for those who have been at the firm at least three months) to the other version, so only they would see it. As an administrator, I see both copies, and I'm almost used to navigating the duplicates. Testing, Testing. . . Our revised learning path revealed more surprises. New habits in the department were suddenly required, since the learning path knew if a certain live class was not on the calendar and would display an "Add Session" buon we did not want users to see. To prevent this, the team now makes sure that there are at least a few upcoming classroom offerings available each quarter, and if no one registers (no recent new hires), they're simply canceled. I also created reports and assigned myself to the learning path so managers could see what the report would look like during new-hire check-ins. That was just one of the changes to new-hire conventions. Previously, during the first three months aer hiring, the team would communicate repeatedly with the new hire and help them schedule the required training. We decided to instead allow new hires to click a buon that showed all available sessions, and to register themselves (and un-register if need be). This removed these tasks from team members and empowered new hires to take control of their schedules. One of the ancillary benefits of our project was discovering how documentation was maintained and delivered, not only to new hires but also to long-time employees. I noticed that many of the paralegal department instructions looked familiar, and it became clear that some of them were simply copied from older versions of the training team's instructions, and saved as a new document. In other instances, unique instructions had been created, but there were already very similar training team instructions that could have been used. In all instances, we decided to remove language at the top of each first page reading "Last updated on. . ." since it only seemed to make the document appear stale and we were developing best practices in keeping items up to date. We also agreed to use training team instructions going forward, and we made sure all links in existing paralegal resources pointed first to the LMS, then to the training team's copy in the DMS, relieving paralegal services from updating documentation. Another issue we uncovered was that some offices were still printing hard copies of the "new hire binder," when the virtual version was supposed to suffice. Some gentle reminders about the benefits to the environment and the reductions in man-hours and printing costs served to quell the urge to print. Flexible and Focused In hindsight, the importance of remaining flexible cannot be overstated. With several stakeholders from different cities each with their own habits, and personal reactions to the way content will be discovered and consumed, deviations are to be expected. There were changes to departmental processes previously agreed upon, as well as changes to procedures for team administrators, all of which I captured in a document that I shared with the stakeholders. From this document came some of the workflow details that I was able to use as best practices at the end of the project, so I found it quite valuable. Whenever a previous decision was questioned, the notes in this document outlined our logic and gave us the background needed to react appropriately. Staying focused on the requests from the group is also paramount, and dictated that I hold back from time to time, since I'm usually trying to push features that I feel are beneficial. But in this case, some of the bells and whistles were not on our plate for good reason: they weren't interested. Keeping the department's limited wish list in mind helped me prevent "scope creep" as well as deliver measurable success for only the agreed goals. Aer several sets of customized instructions and training new administrators for the team, three learning paths and two rollout updates under our belt, we have moved into a maintenance and upkeep mode. But that's for another article. . . P2P

• Cover