Training vs. Communication

I work for a variety of engineers and designers in the civil engineer field as an administrative assistant. Before I was employed with this company, I worked in Retail Sales Management. So needless to say, this was a completely different work environment for me. Everything seemed to be going fairly well, and I really had enjoyed working for this firm and gaining the work experience from this position.

The second year I was employed with this company, our accounting department decided to change our accounting system to a more efficient program. I, along with numerous other administrative assistants were very confused as how this system was to work and there were some "so-called" training workshops offered. In reality, most of the functions and capabilities of this program, we taught ourselves. It seemed to work, and our accounting department was always willing and able to assist with any demonstrations or questions we had, which was a great relief due to a large amount of pressure coming from the project managers. As anything else in life, people do not like changes and the "positive" feedback from our newly implemented program quickly came to a halt. Numerous employees were complaining, stating their administrative assistant was not trained appropriately, etc. Therefore, our HR department discussed the issues with our administrative team and decided to have an on-site training day. The HR manager sent an email to all department heads stating that the administrative assistants would be in training with our accounting program and not available, yet to contact our interns for any immediate assistance. No further detail was given in the email regarding the depth of training. Our training was actually an "intro" to our accounting program and really did not benefit our administrative team any more than what we had already been doing.

One of my sector leaders demanded that I execute a highly detailed report for his department that I did not have access to. I responded that we were not trained in any of these functions, and this is a report that our accounting department would have to complete. He responded to me in a hostile way, "You were in training all day and should know how to do this." After numerous complaints directed toward me, in front of other employees I set up a private meeting with our HR Manger. I explained the situation, what the sector leader was asking for and how I was treated. Our HR Manager didn't even know how to compile this requested data and called in head of accounting. After explaining to our head of accounting he had confirmed that accounting would need to compile this information, although it would not be exact. For a final meeting, I met with the head of accounting as well as the sector leader, who then became frustrated with the outcome and soon began to spread negativity of this program throughout his department. I received support from the HR Manager as well as head of accounting, although I felt let down and insulted from the sector leader. I'm not sure what I should have done differently.

Thankfully, after edits and updates of our accounting program, and more experience with the numerous functions, we are now able to achieve personalized, detailed reports specific to each sector leaders needs. Though there was miscommunication, hostility, and frustration being performed on a continuous basis, our team finally agreed to work together, and now our sector leaders have achieved the appropriate information and that is the most important thing.