Sharing knowledge with peers: return on your investment

Budget constraints are a major obstacle in every university computing organization. Management of these organizations persistently tries to maximize resources that are continuously being exhausted. Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of the Louisiana State University System, realizes these constraints each year. While efficiency has led the way as a core part of Computing Service's mission, procedures were devised to tackle the limited resources dilemma. A knowledge transfer procedure was created and has proven to help aid efficiency efforts, while maximizing resources at the same time. Pennington Biomedical Computing Services Department has different ranges of expertise that are distributed among full-time analysts. These levels of expertise involve technologies such as Cisco, Windows Server, and Novell Netware. Since the full-time analysts are required to be a potential backup in expertise for one another, training plays a crucial role. As training funds are limited, a process to encompass training involving all levels of expertise was necessary. Knowledge transfers became a viable solution to maximize these training efforts. Knowledge transfers are the sharing of knowledge that involves a trained employee to play an instructor role in training the rest of the analysts. As training is conducted with one employee through outside training resources, that employee is required to transfer the new found knowledge to the rest of the staff in the form of an informal training presentation. How would you like to spend $2,000 for a five-day training class for one full-time analyst and get a return on your investment of two, three, or possibly four times that amount? This paper will give details on how to stretch training dollars, get training for your employees, and still have the Help Desk staffed each day to meet end user needs.