The report ’New in the Service Desk’ seeks to provide the reader with an overview of the previous methods of training new employees to work in the Service Desk located at the IT department in Roskilde Municipality.
The Service Desk consists of full time manager and some part time student assistants. Usually three employees handle the main responsibility of the Service Desk, the incoming telephone calls. Besides answering telephone calls the scope of work in the Service Desk consists of reinstalling operating systems on computers handed in and helping ‘clients’ with urgent IT-problems.

When the Service Desk is lacking labour the Service Desk Manager recruits new student assistants to fulfil the incoming tasks. When a new employee is found the employee has to be trained in various topics to fulfil the expectations of the Service Desk. These topics are various systems used by the Service Desk, different working methods and organizational structure of both the IT department and the municipality in general.

In the report five interviews has been conducted. These interviews are the collected empirical data, which is processed and analysed. One of the interviews are with the Service Desk Manager, Martin, and the rest of the interviews are with the most recently employed members of the Service Desk team.
The analysis is based on Yrjö Engeströms (1997) activity theory with a focus on contradictions and expansive learning. Furthermore, the analysis reflects on the four questions of Knud Illeris (2008), which each learning theory must be able to answer in order to qualify as a learning theory.

The question of where and why a specific problem arises are being answered through a contrast analysis of an activity theory perspective. A common goal for both the Service Desk Manager and the new employees has to be found for the training. This is done by using Engeströms theory of expansive learning.
The analysis is rounded off with a concrete answer of the four questions of Illeris which is done to support the choice of theory used in the assignment.

The main conclusion of the analysis is that time, motivation, structure and community are some of the most important parameters to focus on during the process of training new employees in the Service Desk. If these parameters are not in focus it is most likely that the common goal searched for in the analysis, is not reached and the training will therefore be inadequate.

Finally, the report contains a proposed solution as well as perspectives for further work. Here it is suggested that a focus group gathers for some meetings in order to evaluate the proposed solution in the analysis. Furthermore, the proposed solution is supported by a theory of communities of practice. This is consistent with the fact that the analysis suggests that communities of practice must be improved in the service desk to create better conditions for training.