Tech worker charm school?
August 29, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: IT staffing, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Here’s one company that isn’t just training its IT employees on technical skills.
The much-read business periodical “BusinessWeek” reports that mega-corporation Kimberly-Clark recently ran a finishing school of sorts for its IT team.
According to the story by Ben Livisohn, the school was intended to teach the company’s IT team the finer points of “corporate interaction.”
Read: Talk nicely and intelligibly to others in the company.
The two-day seminar resulted from an IT shakeup at the company that started about a year ago when Kimberly-Clark outsourced about 80% of its tech needs.
The 800 or so tech workers who survived the purge got a new job description: Transmit IT knowledge to the business folks.
The problem: The two groups don’t speak the same language. The solution: Teach the technical crowd to speak jargon-free English.
The curriculum also included tips on “relationship building” and dressing better.
View all the Latest StoriesTags: BusinessWeek, charm school, social skills, tech employees
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“The problem: The two groups don’t speak the same language. The solution: Teach the technical crowd to speak jargon-free English.” … IT-bonics??
There must be a way to work in some analogies to welfare or quotas …
From a purely business perspective, how can the “business folks” progress the business without reaching out to understand and apply to a business plan? It’s a recipe for mediocrity.
I smell a rift … and I’ll bet the minority (techies) lose … how sad for business …
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Techies do sometimes have a air about them that could indicate to those not so techy, that they feel superior. Problem is they are not in most cases user capable, only hardware and software installing literate at best. Ask them questions in the rhelm of a user function, and they are stumped, “I don’t know how is it used, only how it works”. What is important to a tech is not always what is important to the user. Likewise, techies I have experienced are very abrupt, short tempered, and dismissive of those who do not speak Techno. (which i do not but can usually get what i need accomplished by asking the right wuestions, if you do not ask the right questions they think you are a bother) this makes it hard for people to like them let alone get any kind of communication going that could resolve a problem. A class like this would be wasted on them however, they would be really angry if they had to do this and then just revert back to their usual behavior, that why if this is done is must be tied speficially to goals and reviews and MONEY, to get them to do it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:57 am
Judging by the quality of some of these written responses, it may be a great idea to enlighten not only the IT staff, but the other management as well regarding simple English sentence structure and grammar. It is sad when people are actually being paid for work that involves communication with others, yet display barely a basic working knowledge of the language. Removing the jargon from these peoples’ vocabularies may leave precious little language ability at all!