DILIMAN, Quezon City—The efficiency and productivity of the Institute’s workforce are expected to advance as 87 personnel from the central office and its network of training centers took part in the Google Workspace End User Training. 

Formerly known as G Suite, Google Workspace is a collection of cloud computing, productivity, and collaboration tools, software, and products developed and marketed by the tech giant. This includes custom email address for business and collaboration tools such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, among others.

In partnership with Kollab, a digital transformation advisor and the first Google Cloud Premier Partner in the Philippines, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) conducted training-workshops on Google Workspace for three batches. These are part of the training privileges under the Institute’s existing subscription with Kollab as the provider of its Google Cloud professional services. 

The first batch was composed of personnel from the central office, and participants for batches two and three were from the regional training centers (RTCs) across the country. 

The activity aims to develop the digital skills of the participants for enhanced communications within the organization and to improve the delivery of training, technical assistance, and advisory services to the clients. Likewise, after the training, they are expected to develop their competencies through enhanced connectivity and productivity in the workplace using Google Workspace collaboration tools. 

The first two training-workshops were facilitated by Joseph Bamba, training manager of Kollab. He presented the Google Workspace collaboration tools and provided online demonstrations for the participants.

Meanwhile, Kollab’s Head of Training Delivery, Michael Yu, facilitated the training session for the last batch. Aside from discussing the Google Workspace collaboration tools, Yu shared some updates on the features of Google Chats, Currents, and Jamboard. 

ATI’s budget officer, Leonila Caiz, expressed her appreciation for the training. 

“The activity is relevant to my work and can be used to enhance the quality of my output, especially in the use of Google-related applications,” she said.

ATI Northern Mindanao information officer Honeylou Bastasa also remarked: “Having this training is very relevant this time, for the majority of our training and other activities in the region are basically done online and Google Meet is one of the online platforms that are very accessible to our clients.”

The Google Workspace End User Training was spearheaded by the Information Services Division of the ATI and was conducted virtually on February 18-19, 2021 via Google Meet.