Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company’s Information Technology (IT) function affects all of the company’s corporate objectives, including building and maintaining customer relationships and satisfaction. As such, Problem Management Training is essential for Nationwide associates who are running these systems and ensuring their availability and functionality on a day-to-day basis.
Since 2012, Nationwide’s Information Technology learning team for the Run Capability has been running a successful course/workshop on Problem Management. This 1.5-day instructor-led workshop provides practice in Problem Management activities in all phases of the process, including identifying and logging problems in the IT environment, identifying the root cause of the problem, and initiating actions to remove the error. Associates learn how to create a problem ticket, a known error ticket, and a task. The business intent of this learning solution is to lower the percentage of formal incidents occurring by more successfully identifying and managing problems early.
Program Details
In addition to some traditional instruction, the course uses the following interactive methods:
- Storytelling through analogies to differentiate between an incident and a problem
- Completing a real-world scenario-based case study about an ATM machine that provides the content for applying key problem management skills
- Group skill practice with feedback using activity sheets, software demonstration, and hands-on practicing logging a problem ticket
The last hour of the class, each training participant must enter a problem ticket, task, and known error ticket in a training environment of the enterprise problem management software application (for a problem of their choice) based on a checklist provided to him or her. Each participant is given a participant guide to keep. It includes the slide deck for the course, the activity worksheets, and step-by-step instructions on how to log a problem ticket, task, and known error ticket in the enterprise software application.
After the course, the training facilitator grades the tickets entered against a set of criteria for each item on the checklist provided to the training participants in the proficiency exercise. The course is pass/fail based on the results of this grading. A passing score is 70 percent.
Results
One hundred percent of students taking the workshop have scored at least 70 percent. Participants are reassessed three to six months later on the same skills matrix and checklist. After the reassessment, some 90 percent of all participants assessed were still implementing the process properly (70 percent or greater score).
The Problem Management Workshop is aimed at preparing associates to identify and remove root causes of a potential incident early in the troubleshooting process, thus keeping the problem from spawning more incidents or becoming a major incident, as well as saving Nationwide significant lost productivity time and resulting expense. During the time period this training has been offered between 2012 and present, incidents have decreased by more than 40 percent.
