Thursday, April 19, 2018

Implementing new technology and staying abreast of emerging trends are increasingly important for libraries. The first step in supporting your community through new technology is adequately supporting your lifeline to the community, your staff. This session discusses encouraging staff buy-in, effective communication methods, fostering and legitimizing staff concerns, teaching opportunities, and simple tools to empower staff. The entire staff may never all be on board, but this is the time to identify the leaders of your organization, and they might not all be management. Get tips and communication methods for engaging multigenerational and multicultural staff, from Google Hangouts and web forums to Post-its. Gain insights for developing an environment in which staff feel safe to fail or not understand and are willing to ask for help and learn. Using marketing, analytics, and social media to prove an ROI to staff is one of the best ways to create buy-in when it comes to implementing new technology, so these important tools are highlighted.