An all-too-familiar joke in the IT training space goes something like this:

A Director of IT walks into the CIO’s office with his budget for the next fiscal year. As they get into the budget discussion, the CIO says “So what is all this money set aside for technical training?”

“We upgraded last month to Windows Server 2016, and also the SharePoint 2016 so we need to get the support team trained on the new versions.” The Director says.

The CIO frowns, “Well, what happens if we get these people trained up and they decide to leave the company??”

The Director pauses for a moment, then says “What happens if we don’t train them and they stay?”

You get the point, yeah? The joke is an old one because technology professionals have been dealing with this reality for years. All the hours that go into negotiating an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, all the people that are involved on the client team, and the team from Microsoft… but did anyone think about how to train the people that are supposed to implement the new software?

“Well they are tech people, they should just know how to use that stuff!”

So when new business processes are rolled out, you just know how to do everything automatically? When the new version of Office rolled out to your team, how much time did you spend trying to find a favorite feature that was moved?

Microsoft includes training vouchers with their Enterprise Agreements, trying to combat the training issue for many years. The team at Microsoft understands that technology that does not get implemented correctly will often not get renewed next time.

One of the problems with these vouchers is that they often go to waste.

“About half of the SATV [Software Assurance Training Vouchers, Microsoft’s technical training vouchers that are included with Enterprise Agreements that have Software Assurance] go to waste within customer accounts.” – this recent statement from a Licensing professional that asked to remain nameless.

One way that technology managers can help their staff get precious training is to make sure to utilize the vouchers from Microsoft before they expire. Sounds simple, so why do half of them never get used?

What has been your experience - Why do vouchers go unused? What roadblocks are you finding in getting your staff trained? Let us know in the comments below.