# Presentation: 419813

## Management Issues Return on Investmentin End User Training

**Meg Williams**
- Network Program Specialist
- FLICC/FEDLINK

## Getting Down to Business

- Return on investment
- Costs and benefits
- time
- money - out of pocket, cost avoidance
- quality
- Efficiency, effectiveness
- doing things right
- doing the right things

## Key Questions

- How much time and effort does training  require?
- How do you show that it’s worth it  -- for your users and for you?
- How do you incorporate a training program into library operations?
- How do you get credit - and resources -for accepting the training mission?

## Where to Lookfor Costs and Benefits

**4**

- Where to Lookfor Costs and Benefits

- _Tangibles_
- Staff time
- for your users
- for you
- Publication costs
- online and fixed
- Materials
- Equipment
- Facilities

- _Intangibles_
- Increased expertise
- Shift in level of inquiry
- different questions
- asked by different people
- Quality of information
- Quality of decisions
- Library relationships
- Morale

##  Staff Costs - Users

**5**

-  Staff Costs - Users

- How much does it cost end users to come to training?
- GS-9, step 1 in Washington DC
- Annual	$31,680
- Hourly (2,080 hours/year)	$15.23
- Daily (8 hours/day)	$121.85

## Weighted Hours Per Year

**6**

- Hours per year	2,080 hrs
- Minus 10 holidays	80 hrs
- Minus 12 leave days_	__     96 hrs_	1,904 hrs
- Times 80% productivity	1,523 hrs(accounting for meetings, breaks, phone time, etc.)
- Annual salary divided by 1,523 hours per year instead of 2,080

## Loaded Staff Costs

**7**

- 			   _Annual__	__Hourly_	_Daily_
- Regular		$31,680	$15.23	$121.85
- Weighted		$31,680	$20.80	$166.39
- +Benefits		$38,016	$24.96	$199.68
- So, a day of training should provide a GS-9 student $199.68 worth of benefits
- 	(not counting opportunity costs, indirect overhead and other infinite refinements ... )

## How Does the UserGet $200 Worth? 

**8**

- How Does the UserGet $200 Worth?

- Spend less time and money online
- Lexis-Nexis		$155 - $380
- Patents, Chem Abstr	$90 - $120
- BIP, ERIC		$30
- Spend the same amount of time online, but get more / better information
- Spend less time offline weeding through poor search results

## Intangibles

**9**

- Being self-sufficient
- Having the right information at the right time
- Networking and having access to experts
- Getting to be an instructor

## Staff Costs - Library

**10**

- Hours
- Developing the class	80 hrs
- Clerical and admin work	4 hrs
- Day before 	4 hrs
- Training day	8 hrs
- Day after 	8 hrs
- Follow up support	_    8 hrs__	_112 hrs
- Loaded salary costs
- GS-11 instructor ($241.58 * 14 days)	$3,382
- After the first time	$725

## Direct Costs

**11**

- Staff costs	$3,382
- Handouts 	$80
- Online resources	$240
- 1 hr/student in a cheap, real database
- Equipment, software, internet	$20
- 5 workstations and a printer,over 3 years, 250 days/year
- Total	$3,722
- 	Additional sessions	$1,065

## Indirect or Elusive Costs

**12**

- Facilities and other agency overhead
- Could be 30% or more
- Oportunity costs
- What else could the trainers have been doing?
- Ripple effect on other library functions
- Hidden costs
- Management, inter-unit coordination

## How Does the LibraryGet Its Money’s Worth?

**13**

- How Does the LibraryGet Its Money’s Worth?

- Staff freed from how-to talks and routine reference
- Greater use of fixed price pubs and systems lowers their cost per user
- CD-ROM, print materials, online subscriptions
- Internet connections, equipment

- Greater use of bibliographic tools lowers their cost per unit
- More accurate ILL, document delivery, and printing
- Empowered users

## Empowered UsersOne the one hand, but on the other hand

**14**

- Empowered UsersOne the one hand, but on the other hand

- Understand what’s possible
- less demanding
- more demanding
- Use publications more
- budget
- spurn print
- conflicts
- input into collection development decisions

- Handle the routine, easy questions
- library handles the hard stuff
- searching instead of doing their own jobs
- Change relationship with the librarian
- require lots of support
- abandon us

## So . . .

- Training costs are not insignificant
- Too great simply to be absorbed
- Library needs some form of compensation
- Benefits can be identified and measured
- Users can reap tangible benefits quickly
- The library’s reward is more intangible
- Overall, the agency benefits both ways
- Next question - How do we fit training in?

## Making Room

**16**

- Who will be your trainers?
- Library staff?  IT staff?  Vendors?  Others?
- How will you conduct training?
- Formal sessions?  Tutorials?  By phone?
- On your schedule?  On demand?
- How will you do troubleshooting and support?
- Cheat sheets?  Hotline?  Refresher classes?

## Librarians as Trainers

**17**

- Position Descriptions
- Which job series?  GS-1410 or GS-1712
- Major duty or “other duties as assigned”
- Vacancy announcements
- Let your trainers:
- Practice teaching - knowing the subject matter is not enough
- Take time to learn, prepare, and evaluate
- Have backups - one expert is not enough

## Partnering and Outsourcing

**18**

- Working with your IT shop or expert users
- More trainers means more staff costs
- Increase in time for development and coordination
- Division of labor
- Better quality
- Shared support duties
- Rapport

- Sending students to the database vendor or other sources
- Up front charges
- Contract administration costs
- System knowledge
- Familiarity with your users
- Who does followup support?

## So . . .

- Library staff and facilities are going to be involved in training and support somehow
- Make sure your positions reflect the work
- Help people get qualified to perform it
- Control the scheduling
- How do we get support for a training program?

## Getting CreditMeans Taking Credit

**20**

- Getting CreditMeans Taking Credit

- Get the library’s face - i.e., you - in front of the students
- Make sure students know that the training is offered under the library’s auspices
- Tell them where to get support
- Have a library staff member welcome the class and introduce the instructor
- Follow up via email to get evaluations and send news

## Make Alliances Beyond Your Core Users

**21**

- Make Alliances Beyond Your Core Users

- Have separate classes for very senior staff
- Different content - address their needs and concerns
- Taught at their desks, when they need it
- Have classes for administrative staff
- Finance, contracting, personnel staff, etc.
- Meet with your counterparts in the IT and program/research units
- Don’t let all the contacts be at the instructor level

## Be on Top of Things

**22**

- Remember, it’s the librarian, not the library
- Sure, you’re in a support unit, but you’re a also good manager
- Quantify wherever you can
- Don’t say everything is immeasurable, intangible.“Goodwill” only counts when a company is sold.
- Make charts and reports
- Analyze your invoices; figure out which units got what
- Couch your reports in terms of information used, not just dollars spent or items handled

## Getting Resources

**23**

- Don’t just absorb the training function
- Unless you can really drop other things
- Don’t ask for piddly little amounts
- Show how much training costs
- Show how much of  the costs you’re funding
- Tell people what their share is
- Tell them how they’ll benefit
- Tell them what they’ll lose if they don’t get trained

## Be Flexible

**24**

- Costs come in many forms
- Staff, materials, equipment, infrastructure, facilities
- So can compensation
- Staff details and temporary help
- An IT hotline to provide support
- Shared training facilities and equipment
- A faster Internet connection

## Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. 

- Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
- Teach a man to fishand you feed him for a lifetime.
- But what if you’re a professional fisherman?And you own the fishing fleet?
- Help the man develop a tastefor Alaska king crab and open a charter service.