First Day IT Orientation

(continuing from yesterday's item)  After we make a hiring decision and determine the new staff member's first day, a lot of things have to take place.

• Computer setup (greatly simplified through use of Citrix)
• Account creation -- copying from a template for great consistency
• Creating lots of email aliases to cover all reasonable possibilities of guessed email address -- we want staff to be easy to reach
• Creating group memberships to fit the new person into a department, assign a default printer, put into mailing lists, etc.
• The new staff member receives a copy of the IT Policy and is asked to read it before their first day (funny, sometimes this doesn't happen)

Finally the first day arrives.  The new staff member is welcomed into the new department, gets a tour around the facility and meets a lot of people in the process, learns where mailboxes and copiers are, collects all kinds of HR and payroll paperwork, probably gets introduced to the joy of a few meetings, and finally, sometime during the day, has "the appointment with Jim."

I need to digress for a moment here.  Jim LaBarr is our staff trainer.  He's been on staff at Perimeter for a little over 7 years.  A few interesting things about Jim:

• He's hard to miss in a crowd as he's 6 ' 9 1/2" tall (keep in mind, typical door frames are only 6' 8")
• Jim earned his MCSE while working at Perimeter.  He passed all the tests on the first try
• While earning his MCSE, Jim did a lot of work with users - helpdesk, training classes, and one-on-one sessions with people and departments
• As a results of that work with users, Jim made an interesting decision (my very liberal paraphrase): he decided he liked people better than computers!  As a result, the IT Training department was born and Jim became the user advocate, specifically focusing on the things that users need, despite what the IT department might claim they need

The meeting:
Jim and the new staff member meet in some convenient place, like in the lab area right outside his office, or in the person's new office space, or pretty much anywhere else in the building.  Jim has even managed to do a few handoffs over the phone, while the new staff member has a remote connection.  (the wonders of a Citrix web client)  After the usual niceties, Jim goes over a few specific things, including:

• Having the user acknowledge reading and agreeing to the policy manual.  And signing a form so stating.  (that one's a bit difficult for remote users)
• Overview of power protection
• Overview of security
• Discussion of confidentiality/privacy of church information
• Instructions on how to use the phones
• Quick introduction to our file systems and storage locations
• Quick introduction to Outlook
• Another reminder of security
• Information on anti-virus, and the "only open" rules
• Setting up a custom email signature
• How to address an email the right way
• How to avoid spam
• The delivery of the password
• How to use Peroogle to easily find documents (what's Peroogle?  Please ask me)
• Jim also provides the user a few documents to use as reminders of all that's happened in this quick handoff.  (This would be a great place for our next great idea -- to nicely collect those documents into some nice binding that people want to keep handy, and yet also be easy to updae)
• Sometimes he includes a "field trip" and lets the new person actually see the "amazing computer room."  (usually amazingly cluttered and dirty, but the flashing lights can still be interesting)
• When needed, Jim patiently provides some extra hands-on training for Windows, or Word, or Outlook, or sometime more basic things, like how to use a mouse.  We do hire people with a wide range of technical skills

After all is covered, Jim reminds the new staff member of the required training classes and usually sets a date with them right then.  And with that, the newly empowered staff member is off to do great things.

It may not be a perfect process, but it's sure been great for us.  Oh, I should mention, Jim is not the only person ever to do a handoff.  Gail does a few, and amazingly, even I can do a handoff when required.  Amazing…  But Jim gets the majority of the credit and does the majority of the handoffs.  I'll sing Gail's praises another time.

Comments

[Jason Powell]

Ok...so what's Peroogle?

[Tony Dye]

"Peroogle - the merger of Perimeter Church and Google, Inc." Well, that's what we said on April 1, when we launched it :-) Peroogle is the Google Mini that makes searching our internal network so much easier. The name was originally a joke, but it caught on, so we kept it.

[Tony Dye]

Jim reminded me of one more thing that's covered in the handoff, and that's to make sure the default printer is properly selected and that the new staff member knows where that printer is physically located. We also, generally, show users how to choose other printers in the facility.