–MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 AND CUSTOMER CARE TRAINING

The Eastern Cape Departmentof Education has spent over R700 000 training more than 100 Personal Assistants and Office Managers on Microsoft Office 365.This comes after a call by the Superintendent General Temba Kojana to trainall frontline staff specifically PA’s and Office Mangers on all Applications they need to make their work more effective and efficient.He makes this call subsequent to a laptop roll-out programme he had initiated in the Department in partnership with Vodacom, where PA’s and Office Managers were each furnished with a laptop and cellphone loaded with a supply of monthly 2Gigabyte of data and R200 airtime.

“The Department has bought 33000 computersthat comes with the Microsoft Office 365 packagefrom Microsoft, these were issued out to PA’s, Office Managers and teachers hence this training”, said Mr. Luvuyo Mgijima, Human Resource Development Assistant in Training Coordination. These officials will need the required skills to use these devices for office use, it therefore became imperative for the Department to offer this training. He further alluded that the same training will be conducted for teachers as well, as they were also amongst those who were recipients of these working tools with the same package.

Speaking to Anthony Cotterell of ELMI College, who was one of the training facilitators, he said,“It is very encouraging for us to see the amount of money government is putting into upskilling its staff and training them”. Commenting on how this training will help workers he stated that “Technology makes life easier, it is a great step forward, It’ll make them be more efficient, more productive and It’ll peak their interest because they’ll actually want to learn more now”. He also affirmed that, on Completion of the training, two certificates will be issued out, one for attendance and one for qualification as a trainer.

Attendeeswill be required to transfer skill to colleagues who did not have the opportunity to attend by training them on same application. This will assist all workers to be on par in terms of understanding and ensure that there is no vacuum and competent substitutes are available when others are absentor unable to be in the office.

Possessing a skill without character to match would seem like a futile exercise hence the Customer Care Unit is always on board in ensuring that employees attitudes and their approach to dealing with clients become the difference maker in the way public servants serve customers. 100 frontline staff attended a customer care training that largely dealt with efficient and effective customer relations and interaction in the workplace. This widely addressed issues of positive and good service delivery with the aim of improving people skills amongst employees.

The training seemed to yield the desired results as attendees praised the department for having allowed them to attend such a fruitful and empowering training. “It is my desire that not only frontline staff will be exposed to this training but also supervisors, as well as newly appointed staff”, said Bukelwa Zide, payroll officer. Zide also stated that “this training changes the way one views the workplace and makes one have a greater desire to serve”.

Change starts from within and further transcends to those around you. “You must be the change you want to see in the world”, Mahatma Gandhi