Most people today have a basic understanding of Microsoft Office applications, but very few utilize these programs to their maximum level of efficiency and effectiveness. Employees who have acquired a mastery of the Office suite through Microsoft Office training can work significantly faster and with fewer errors than those with only basic knowledge learned through trial and error. Introducing Microsoft Office training to employees is one of the most effective ways for any computer centered company to considerably improve productivity.

How Microsoft Office Training Improves Productivity
Microsoft Office training is about much more than just simple shortcuts. Office is a highly interactive set of tools that users can customize to help them improve how they do their specific job functions. For example, an employee who uses Microsoft Word to type out mailing labels can reduce processing time by as much as 80% by gaining a mastery of the mail merge feature through a Microsoft Office training course.

Just about anyone using Office on a daily basis is likely to discover at least one or two ways to drastically cut time and improve functionality after taking a Microsoft Office training course. But perhaps the greater impact of Microsoft Office training is the combined savings of an entire office shaving small amounts of time off of many small tasks like email processing. On average, employees receive 42 emails per day, so learning to archive mail, create mailing distribution lists, and create rules can significantly improve the efficiency of an entire office.

Gauging the Level of Proficiency in your Office
To get and idea about how much your employees know about the potential of Microsoft Office, try giving a survey to your employees asking them to list the functionalities of programs like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. If you find that a majority are returned with responses like "word processor" and "calculator" respectively, your company should seriously consider Microsoft Office training for employees.

Generally it's not that employees don't want to learn new ways to interact with the tools they use every day, but that they aren't aware of the capabilities built into the Microsoft Office suite of products. Because many businesses don't require any type of Microsoft Office training, the majority of people are working with only a fraction of any application's functionality. Whether your employees are using Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Front Page, there is a Microsoft Office training course to shed light on new ways of performing old and time consuming tasks.

Forms of Microsoft Office Training
Like any type of training today, there are a variety of ways to bring Microsoft Office training to your employees. Whether instruction is giving at a training facility, given in house by Microsoft Office training professionals, or through self paced online training, there is a Microsoft Office training program to fit the needs of just about any company.

Statistically speaking, classroom training is still the most effective way to transfer information, especially for more technical topics. With face to face training, students have the ability to ask questions, request that information be explained in a different way, and see the instructor walk through the practice examples in real time. Some Microsoft Office training facilities even offer customized training programs for employers with more specific needs.

According to a recent study by Microsoft, employees rated themselves as unproductive for about 17 hours during any given work week for various reasons including ineffective meetings, unclear priorities, and software issues. With two complete days lost per employee per week due to inefficiency, there is a lot of room for improvement. The easiest way for any company to improve their bottom line is to improve their current processes; otherwise, growth only brings an exponential increase in wasted time and money. Microsoft Office training is one of the most effective choices any business can make toward increasing efficiency in the workplace.