5 Reasons Why Training & Education is Critical

Tyler Podcast Episode 45, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Often we make investments in a new software solutions and jump right into using it before we really know how to use it. Today on the Tyler Tech Podcast, Wendy Steiner, Tyler's director of training and education, shares with us the 5 Reasons Why Training and Education is critical for your success. She also shares some of the resources available to help you maximize your investment in your software solution.

Transcript

Wendy Steiner: We know that adults learn in different ways, and there's really four different ways that adults learn. Hearing, visual, hands on, and reading, and so all of the training programs that are out there try to incorporate all of those approaches for our clients.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today, and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm your host, Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing for Tyler, and I'm glad that you've joined me. Well, it is 2022, and hopefully you had a great holiday. A lot of times we will get something under the tree, maybe it's a piece of technology, a piece of equipment. We'll get it out. We'll unwrap it, we'll start using it, but often we don't take time to learn how to use it. This happened to me. One of my gifts this year is I got a brand new running watch. I put it on. I ran out, started using it, and realized it's a newer model than what I had before, and I couldn't figure out how to use all the cool features that it has. Well today, that's exactly what we're talking about. Today we've got Wendy Steiner. She is the director of training and education here at Tyler Technologies, and she's going to tell us the five reasons why training and education is critical for your success. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Wendy Steiner. Well, Wendy thanks so much for joining the Tyler Tech podcast.

Wendy Steiner: Thank you for having me.

Jeff Harrell: So I'm very excited, because we're going to be talking about five reasons why training and education is critical for your success, but I thought before we dive into those five reasons, we'd love to learn a little bit about you. Wendy, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in training.

Wendy Steiner: So my name's Wendy Steiner, and I'm the director of training and education for Tyler Technologies. I've actually been with the company a little bit over eight years now, but I actually started training and development about 20 years ago. Long time. We're all in training. We all have learned along the ways from school all the way through, but when I graduated high school, I really loved education, and thought about becoming a teacher, and life had me go a different direction. I ended up in the restaurant industry, and became a VP of training and development for different restaurant companies, and then came to Tyler Technologies. So, I've been doing it for a very long time, and it is definitely a passion of mine.

Jeff Harrell: Wow. Software certainly can be fun and exciting. I would imagine restaurant life was hectic and crazy. Is that true?

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely. It was every holiday, every weekend, and late nights, but it was something that I did love for a long time. So now I'm happy to be in more of a position where I'm not having to work every weekend.

Maximizing Your Investment

Jeff Harrell: Yes, I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, we're excited to learn from you today. So let's go ahead and dive in. I think training and education is fundamental and critical for success. So what's that first reason why training and education is so critical?

Wendy Steiner: The first one for our clients is that it absolutely maximizes your investment. You just purchased a new software program, and you spent a lot of money on it. Many of the programs that are out there, sometimes you think you can just turn it on and figure it out, but to truly get the most value for your investment, and you want to know all the tips and tricks and best practices of how the software was intended to be used, then our training sessions are absolutely critical. This allows every level within a municipality to know their exact role in how to get what they need from the new software that's out there.

Jeff Harrell: Because Wendy, I can imagine, a lot of times we think, yeah, it's turn it on out of the box, start using it, but we're talking about some pretty complex software doing some pretty intricate calculations and solutions. So, that training has got to be really, really important.

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely, and the other part like I said, was that we have all levels within organizations, and every level needs to know something different about the software so that it can, again, maximize that investment in what you have to do for your role. So, we actually can customize the training as well, so that we're really pinpointing to what your exact needs are. So that actually helps as well.

Improves Productivity

Jeff Harrell: Maximizing your investment is reason number one that training and education is critical for success. What about number two?

Wendy Steiner: Definitely that it improves productivity. So, I've spoken to clients that say that they don't need training, or they don't have time to sit through the training program that we have. I always ask them, would you rather spend hours, or have your employees just spend hours just clicking through not really understanding what they're doing and trying to figure it out on their own? Then when they do finally figure it out, and they have that light bulb moment, then they can't figure out how they actually got to that point. Or do you want to have them spend the time in the training program and really make it work for them, so they know exactly what they need, and how to get there every single time? So it increases the productivity, it makes them more efficient, it makes them more consistent, and it also requires less supervision on the manager's part. So it just works all the way around to improve that productivity for every employee.

Jeff Harrell: Because a lot of times our clients are adopting this technology, this software to solve a problem, to create more efficiency, so to not take the time and actually learn it the right way so that you are more productive, it's almost a dichotomy there, isn't it?

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely.

Elevates Job Satisfaction

Jeff Harrell: Well that's number two. Improves productivity. What about number three? What's reason number three?

Wendy Steiner: Number three for me is that it elevates job satisfaction. I don't know if you know this Jeff, but over 40% of employees actually leave their positions within the first year because they didn't get the proper training, or didn't have the right training opportunities given to them. Many times they're just thrown into a position, have no idea what to do, let alone all the other tools that are out there. We have to understand our computers as well with Microsoft and things, so there's so many different things we have to learn just to be functional in our roles. So, employees that are actually trained are more likely to enjoy their jobs, to be engaged. It increases the morale within the entire municipality, which can also spread to their clients. So it definitely eliminates the stress that they have, and elevates that job satisfaction.

Jeff Harrell: I didn't know that stat was that high. 40% leaves after the first year. I wonder if that's even increased with COVID, and Bill I know we've talked a lot about this Giant Resignation they're calling it, where people are leaving jobs for other jobs. I wonder even if that number's gone up?

Wendy Steiner: It very well could have.

Saving Money

Jeff Harrell: I love that. So elevates your job satisfaction. What about... We're whipping through this. We're going to pause here in a second, because I want you to talk a little bit about what training looks like on site, but let's go into number four. What's reason number four?

Wendy Steiner: So number four for me is that it saves the department money. They think that they're pulling their people out of their roles to learn this new software, and that it's actually hurting them, but what happens is a municipality may have longer wait times because half of their staff is in training, and the customers might get upset, but the same thing could happen if they forgo the training, and your staff doesn't know what they're doing. They're scrambling around while the customers are still waiting. So either way, they're going to have those long wait times, with the training or without the training. It's just a matter of, with the training we know that eventually that's not going to happen, and they're going to be become more efficient like we talked about, and it's just going to save the department a ton of money. The other part that they're going to save money with is turnover. Like we said in the last reason is that we have that 40% of people that leave because they don't get training, well, when you have that turnover, now you have to go through the process of interviews and finding the right candidate, and it's just exhausting. So, spending the time to train them the first time will eliminate all of that. Also, when you have trained staff, your departments are more likely to meet goals that you have set for them, and have better project outcomes because of that training.

More Rounded Employees

Jeff Harrell: Too, I think these all kind of feed together. When someone is trained, and they are more productive, and they can probably take on more because they are productive, can departments also repurpose other resources to other areas, and thus then saving them money in that area as well?

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely. Jeff, that sort of leads into my last point, which was my last reason creates more rounded employees. I feel like we stated it before we talked about it increases morale, efficiencies, productivity, but when you invest in the training by teaching these new skills, or improving the existing skills that they have, and help develop the expertise, you increase their value. Then what that does is it reduces attrition, because you're providing a career pathway for them, and they may not go somewhere else to seek that next level opportunity, because you're training them. So like you said, it will provide that cross training for them and allow you to keep and really have that employee with you for a long-term commitment.

Jeff Harrell: So I love this. So the five reasons, again, are number one, it maximizes your investment. Number two, it improves productivity. Three, elevates job satisfaction. Four, saves your department money, and then five, creates a more well-rounded employee. I'd love to shift gears a little bit, Wendy, and talk about how does training actually happen? So someone makes an investment in software and a solution. What's the next step in terms of learning that program, learning that solution, how does training then happen?

Wendy Steiner: Awesome. So it works different ways depending on the product that was purchased, but I do want to step back a little bit and tell you that we know that adults learn in different ways, and there's really four different ways that adults learn. Hearing, visual, hands-on, and reading. So all of the training programs that are out there try to incorporate all of those approaches for our clients. When somebody signs up for training, there's different ways that they can get that training. A lot of times it's with actual instructor-led courses that we have, whether it is onsite, or it's remote. Now with COVID, we're doing a lot more remote training, but it works. It could be also with e-learning courses that we have, with videos that are available. We do live webinars and demonstrations. We also have user guides to help navigate, and we also have setup guides of the software as well. So all of those items allow us to train the way that we need to so that all of our people get the right information at the right time.

 

More Tools

Jeff Harrell: So Wendy, are there any tools for existing clients that they can leverage to really help with training as well?

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely. So we do have a platform called Tyler U, or Tyler University. We like to refer to it as Tyler U, and it is a 24/7 learning management system that allows our users to go in and access these e-learning courses, and videos, and user guides, and really be able to get those things at any given time, 24/7. The other part to that is through Tyler U we also offer live training, and we call it virtual learning courses, and these allow existing clients to continue their education and keep learning more and more as they go through software changes. When we increase or change functionality, then we put new classes out there so that they can always stay on top of where we are.

Jeff Harrell: I know that you mentioned earlier, people learn different ways, and sometimes people learn from their peers as well. We've got something called Tyler Community, I think, which allows our clients to connect with each other.

Wendy Steiner: Absolutely. Tyler Community is great. We have over 60,000 people that have subscribed to Tyler Community, and it is that platform that allows them to talk to other municipalities and just pose those questions of, hey, how do you do this? How are you handling that? It allows our clients to actually engage them, and give them tips and tricks on how they use the software. So it's a fabulous tool that's out there, and it's free for all of our clients to use.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. I love when we see people asking questions on Community and other clients are answering those questions, and they're kind of building those buses, because a lot of times the specific situation may be unique to that jurisdiction. There's another jurisdiction that size that's had that same issue. So we love when we see those connections happening. Then of course we have our big user conference, our big training every year called Connect. Talk a little bit about Connect in 2022.

Wendy Steiner: Oh, 2022. We're so excited about it. We're looking to have Jeff, you can correct me with my numbers, but I think it's more than 8,000 people attend that. That includes our employees. So we have a lot of people that go. It's just such a great networking opportunity for people, and also to learn. That is my favorite thing. Like I said, it's my passion, and the number of courses that we teach, I know last year, I think we taught over 1200 different courses, and this year we'll be adding even more than that. We typically have two and a half days and 14 different sessions that we run, and in those 14 sessions we'll have different tracks. So depending on the product lines that you have purchased, you have all types of opportunities to learn from beginner, all the way to advanced. We try to include every type of learning situation that we can for you.

Jeff Harrell: This year we're very excited because we are in person, cross our fingers, in Indianapolis. So we're very excited about that. The last couple of years have been virtual, obviously with the pandemic. So very excited to actually all get together, and learn together, and mix in a little bit of fun, and as you said, networking at Connect. Well, Wendy, if someone is interested in connecting with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Wendy Steiner: Via email would be the best way to connect with me. That is Wendy.Steiner@tylertech.com. I would love any opportunity to connect with our different clients out there and hear what their needs are, and give us some feedback as well. We're always trying to improve, and make it better for our clients.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Wendy, I really appreciate you bringing your gifts of training and education, and sharing those with Tyler, and with our clients. So, thanks so much for joining me today.

Wendy Steiner: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I've had the benefit of getting to know Wendy over the last several years, and so I can tell you that she brings that heart and passion behind training and education to her job every day. So Wendy, we are thankful for that, and for the time that you spent with us today on the Tyler Tech podcast. Well, thanks again for joining us. We have a brand new episode that drops every other Monday. We have lots of big plans for 2022. Now that we are into the new year, happy new year everybody. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe. Until next time, this is Jeff Harrell, Director of Content Marketing with Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.