{"id":142243,"date":"2026-01-22T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trainingindustry.com\/?post_type=magazine&p=142243"},"modified":"2026-01-22T12:06:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T17:06:26","slug":"the-underappreciated-power-of-training-on-technology-basics","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/trainingindustry.com\/magazine\/winter-2026\/the-underappreciated-power-of-training-on-technology-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Underappreciated Power of Training on Technology Basics"},"author":52,"featured_media":107348,"template":"","tags":[2939,36512,3417],"class_list":["post-142243","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-digital-fluency","tag-foundational-technology-training","tag-technology-skills","global_topic_tax-it-and-technical-training","magazine_issue_tax-winter-2026","magazine_article_type_tax-info-exchange","magazine_article_type_tax-upskilling-info-exchange"],"acf":{"sponsored":false,"gated":false,"gated_content_type":"","file_attachment":null,"gated_content":"","form_instruction_header":"To access the full article, please fill out the form below:","pardot_html_embed":"","author_override":true,"author_name":"Melissa Swift","author_image":"","author_bio":"Melissa Swift is the founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight<\/a>, a company debugging modern work for greater effectiveness. She is the author of the forthcoming book, \u201cEffective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World\u201d (Wiley, 2026) as well as \u201cWork Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace\u201d (Wiley, 2023).","excerpt":"Organizations don\u2019t need better training on every new tool \u2014 they need to teach people how to be good with technology itself.","main_content":"Think about how you learned to drive a car and think about how you learned to use a smartphone. Completely different, right?\r\n\r\nWe teach people how to drive cars and require them to display that knowledge before we hand over a license. Smartphones, on the other hand, are a fully DIY exercise. Nobody walked you through the overall functionality or any of the apps. You just picked it up and used it.\r\n\r\nIntegrating new workplace technology today is a funny mix of the \u201ccar\u201d model and the \u201csmartphone\u201d model. But at today\u2019s pace, this combination of approaches isn\u2019t working.\u00a0 The number of technologies the average worker touches in a day has increased dramatically in recent years<\/a>. Organizations are now challenged to train on more technologies, faster.\r\n\r\nMoreover, sophisticated emerging technologies are no longer neatly categorizable. Is generative artificial intelligence (AI) a \u201ccar\u201d \u2014 complex and a bit dangerous? Or is it a \u201csmartphone\u201d \u2014 easy peasy intuitive? It doesn\u2019t help that the underlying technology itself changes week to week, a seminal issue of the cloud era in general. The costly, time consuming and often confusing journeys organizations go through to try to train employees how to use generative AI won\u2019t be the last such scramble.\r\n\r\nScrambles are unsustainable. It's time to completely reset our approach to technology training.\r\nGood With Technology<\/h2>\r\nWhat would a good reset look like? This is an issue that I\u2019ve been working on for the better part of a decade, helping large, complex organizations take their people on the digital transformation journey. I\u2019ve also explored the issue of how we can best use technology at work across research and interviews for two books. For my upcoming book \u201cEffective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World,\u201d I pressed some top-notch chief information officers and other C-suite figures on a very specific question: What does it mean to be good with technology at work?\r\n\r\nThis research combined with years of observation and experimentation on \u201cwhat works in the wild\u201d led me to a surprising conclusion: We have to go back to the basics. It\u2019s something that in more than 50 years of the Information Age, we\u2019ve never done.\r\n\r\nWe need to help people learn how to be good with technology \u2014 ANY technology.\r\n\r\nWhat organizations currently lack, and what the most technologically adept workplaces possess on an informal or even accidental basis, is a reliable methodology for keeping folks digitally fluent. Concretely, this translates to a backbone of learning about the core skills of technological adeptness.\r\n\r\nA common skill set helps all employees, in all roles, succeed at working fluidly with an array of technologies. Moreover, establishing a common language and toolkit around core technological skills speeds the development of all subsequent tactical tech trainings around specific technologies, removing uptake time, cost and content creation pressures.\r\n\r\nFoundational training about technology may sound amorphous, but it actually points to a very specific set of skills and should be governed by a set of execution principles fairly different from how tech training operates today.\r\nThe \u201cWhat\u201d: Skills Foundational Tech Training Should Underscore<\/h2>\r\nAsk technologically adept folks what it means to be \u201cgood with technology\u201d and observe how technological capability plays out in practice, and you will hear and see a pretty consistent set of skills that training can then be built off of. These skills can be summarized as:\r\n\r\n \t- Data, logic and the fundamentals of code. <\/strong>Do we all need to learn how to code? Absolutely not, especially in an era where coding is more and more automated. But understanding the very basics of how code is built, where information comes from and what software does with it dramatically enhances our ability to work with technology. A little understanding goes a long way. It\u2019s fascinating to see how executives who had two hours of training on Visual Basic 20 years ago are more astute users of generative AI today. Know a little bit about how all software works, and you can use any software better.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Experimentation and debugging. <\/strong>Most of today\u2019s tech training walks users through a linear path of the technology working perfectly. This is a mistake. Really adept users of technology can both play around with the system to ensure they\u2019re getting full value from their use, and they can fix it (to some degree) when things go wrong. Experimentation and debugging aren\u2019t loosey-goosey processes; there are overarching strategies to each that can be applied over and over.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Understanding technology\u2019s possibilities and limitations (including how technologies work together). <\/strong>Much of what reads as reticence in technology adoption is in fact users\u2019 natural reactions to not knowing either the potential or the limitations of technology. And oftentimes, problems erupt because users are genuinely not conscious about how technologies do or don\u2019t work together. (\u201cWait, those systems don\u2019t talk to each other?\u201d) These are issues that can be addressed head-on by giving technology a real \u201cjob description,\u201d as you would for any human on your team.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Safety and security. <\/strong>New cyber scams erupt every day, and new technologies surface new safety issues constantly. But once again \u2014 there\u2019s a concrete backbone of ideas about everything from protecting identifying information to ensuring information quality to basic well-being in a technology-rich environment that can, and should, be taught.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","full_width":false,"content_band":[{"acf_fc_layout":"social_callout","blockquote":"We need to help people learn how to be good with technology \u2014 ANY technology. "},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_area","wysiwyg":"
The \u201cHow\u201d: Creating Foundational Tech Training That Truly Works<\/h2>\r\nTo get employees more adept with technology at a core level, form must follow function. Training should mirror how tech is utilized in modern organizations. This training should be:\r\n\r\n \t- \u201cSandbox\u201d based.<\/strong> \u00a0The training should allow users to test and learn with technology in a protected environment.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Always-on and iterative.<\/strong> The training should be framed as an accessible resource rather than a one-time event.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Engaging and fun.<\/strong> People who genuinely work well with technology today are those who enjoy it. This is a sentiment that can be driven in a broader population by treating tech-based activities more as play, less as drudgery.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Contextualized, in the flow of work, role-and-level appropriate and milestone-driven.<\/strong> The better connected fundamental understanding of technology is to an employee\u2019s current work tasks and career stages, the better it will resonate. This is particularly true at higher leadership levels, where organizations often do a poor job of articulating the (actually very relevant) role of technology in leaders\u2019 jobs.<\/li>\r\n \t
- Structurally aligned to subsequent tactical training.<\/strong> For example, every training on a new technology should include a section on debugging specific to that technology.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nIt may feel strange to go \u201cback to basics\u201d and talk about things like the basic principles of software or data. But giving employees this foundational understanding truly accelerates the velocity of every technology-specific effort \u2014 and helps ease the stress of a working world where tech plays a greater and greater role.\r\n\r\nFix this missing link, and people and technology will work together elegantly."},{"acf_fc_layout":"social_callout","blockquote":"To get employees more adept with technology at a core level, form must follow function."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_area","wysiwyg":"