Stress-Free Tracking of Staff Training with your Cloud-Based Learning Management System

Businesses of all sizes conduct training of some kind with their team members. From mandatory compliance training to understanding how internal systems work — training is a key part of a business and its success.

The trouble with training is that it can get difficult to track, monitor and report to key individuals when required. These individuals could be shareholders, management from a different location, regulatory bodies and so on — when they want to know, they want to know it quickly.

This is where the centralised LMS comes in. With all the features that web-based LMS and training management systems have, your ability to stay on top of things become a whole lot easier.

1. Customising Training Plans for Staff and Departments.

Something that we understand is that training and compliance is a key part of every business. Training can provide a whole spectrum of benefits that range from product training to infection control, when it’s web-based it also provides a central training, tracking and reporting location ensuring everything is up-to-date.

With the variety of training courses and requirements, there needs to be a laser-like focus on the training that is provided to your team. A training plan for your LMS will not only provide structure for your team, it will also make tracking of training easier.

Depending on the size of your company, industry, and reasons for implementing an LMS you can create a training plan based on different factors, including:

• Job role: The team members day-to-day role will determine what training is required, it will also determine if additional training may be needed. For example, the healthcare industry provides training in fire, first aid and food hygiene — a structured plan helps to track and monitor progress, problems and expiration dates.
• Job level: Trainees and interns will probably need a different set of training courses when compared to management. With the structure, you can create a template training plan that put’s the relevant team members onto this training path.
• Location: This is where the ‘cloud-based’ aspect of training comes in. With a web-based LMS there are few, if any, restrictions on the training that can be delivered. However, distance makes tracking difficult unless you use a single solution that provides a platform for training, monitoring, and reporting.

So when might this training plan be useful? Each business has its own unique methods and processes, however, industries that are regulated and stick to a strict compliance code generally need the same basic training across the board.

• New hires
• New agency members
• Onboarding
• Post probation period
• Customer/Product education

With a distributed team, general/mandatory training and internal training to it can be very quick and easy to lose track of things whilst using spreadsheets. Web-based LMS eliminates the distance between you and your team as well as create a far more fluid process that doesn’t require members the team to all gather into a central location at specific times — potentially causing a staffing issue on the day.

2. Training Expiration Reminders

Some forms of training a required to be completed on a regular basis. This includes fire safety which is mandatory but it also could include internal systems updates and so on.

Which brings us to the issue of job roles, levels and locations that can and generally does cause a lot of tracking and monitoring issues. This is once again when a central, web-based LMS becomes the stress inhibiting piece of technology that will forever make the stagnant spreadsheet disappear.

With a central system, you have the freedom to think a little less about training expiry, not being compliant or staff not being trained up on the right path or progressing as they should.

Internal communications within an LMS will provide triggers for you and the users to ensure they are reminded in advance to renew their training and where they need to spend more time.

The automated communication hands back a lot of time to employers and trainers who have to ensure everyone is up-to-date. Time that can be spent streamlining processes elsewhere.

3. Tracking Completed Training & Courses

One of the USPs of an LMS is that you can see and monitor the completed training and progress. For compliant and regulation-heavy industries this is essential when training gets reviewed, running the risk of non-compliance can put lives at risk and get costly.

Tracking can include:

• Learners progress, who the learners were.
• View assessment results — including pass/fails and attempts.
• Full reports can be pulled on individuals and groups — which can be used as part of data research to see any internal trends or potential improvement ideas.

Another side of all this tracking is that if it so happens to be that a problem develops or an expert is needed, the LMS system can provide you with a database of skills and individuals who have them.