Why And How To Track Employee Training Progress?

Introduction:

Employee training and development is an essential part of every organization’s functioning. You have probably spent countless hours creating training programs for your employees. However, putting in the effort to make the training program isn’t enough. It is important to get results from it. Investing in the right technology that aligns with the learning vision of your company is a big step in the proper direction.

Before we get into how you can deploy effective training programs and track them, let’s first explore why it is imperative to track employee training.

Why should you track employee training?

There are several reasons why the most profitable companies in the world track employee training.

Reduce employee attrition:

The quality of your employee training and development programs can have a direct impact on the productivity and morale of your employees. According to research, 40 percent of employees who do not receive proper training programs from their employer leave within the first year. The cost of attrition is as high as $2500 per employee for replacement. A well-developed and executed employee training program can save thousands of dollars lost from backfilling job roles.

For the employees who remain on the job, you will likely miss out on key signals if there’s a lack of insight into their training involvement. For example, if someone isn’t completing their employee training, it might mean that they are on the lookout for other opportunities, frustrated or disengaged. Tracking employee training can give a perspective of what may be causing the employees to not complete assigned courses. At a minimum, it can open up a discussion to better understand the employee’s mindset about the job and address concerns. 

Fine-tune your L&D efforts:

Tracking employee learning and development programs will help you pinpoint the areas where employees get stuck in their training, which materials are not engaging enough, or which courses are not yielding desired results. 

Learner and team metrics can give you information on how the course is received and identify areas for improvement. With these insights, you can continuously transform the courses and learning experience for your employees to derive maximum value in your professional development initiatives.

Make employees feel valued:

Skill development matters a great deal to most employees. 94 percent of employees would stay at a company longer if it helped them learn. Investing in the professional development of your employees with engaging training programs can function as a way to enhance employee loyalty and help them with their career trajectory. Tracking employee training programs enables you to see how far your employees are in their learning journeys. 

A system that allows you to track employee training, will enable you to monitor who is proactively completing the training courses offered and measure their performance.  If an employer continues to add value, it is proven to keep employees inspired and engaged.

Keep safety and compliance under check

Non-compliance and lack of certifications can cause heavy losses to certain industries such as banking, capital markets, energy, insurance, investment management, and life sciences sectors. There are several norms that these industries need to follow, and management needs to stay on top of training programs to ensure employees are up-to-date with the latest guidelines.

Tracking employee training in areas requiring high compliance ensures everyone on site has the most updated information they need to do their job safely and within legal standards. 

How to Choose the Best Employee Training Tracker?

Now that you know the importance of tracking employee training, the next question is how do you choose which employee training tracker is the best fit for your organization?

Here is a step-by-step guide that will help you choose the right employee training tracker, also referred to as a Learning Management System (LMS).

Identify your goals:

An employee training tracker is not a one-size-fits-all solution for learning and development. Every organization has different needs and the LMS needs to fit into those criteria. 

First, define the exact goals that your company wants to accomplish from a training tracker. The goals you set should be short-term as well as long-term. And they should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). 

Second, setting realistic goals before beginning research into the LMS market can act as a blueprint to make the best decision for your organization’s unique needs.  Here are some examples of long-term and corresponding short-term goals related to learning and development. 

Long-term goal: Increase the number of OSHA certifications by 25%

Short-term goals for this larger goal:

• Create engaging learning content in the form of short videos.
• Gamify the learning experience to keep employees engaged.
• Introduce scenario-based learning for better retention.
• Assess employees after each lesson and module.
• Track employee progress and guide employees who get stuck.

Analyze employee preferences:

The key goal of an employee training tracker is to ensure your employees learn more effectively, thereby deriving a higher ROI through your employee training and development programs. 

Your employees are the audience who will consume the training programs. Ask questions of your employees. Get a feel for what employees want to learn about, what will make them better in their current role, and what aspirations for advancement might they have.  As a leader of your company’s culture, it’s crucial to understand these components.

Consider employee preferences. For example – what is the age group of your employees you wish to train? How do they like to learn? Are videos and quiz games something that would be accepted as fun and engaging? Will they be accessing learning from work or home, or both? What % of your employee base will likely use smartphones or tablets to absorb content?  

Different generations prefer varied ways of communication and the employee training and development programs need to be tweaked accordingly. For example, if your audience belongs to the GenZ generation, the content will mostly be in video format, in bite sizes, and perhaps a feature that enables them to share their progress on social media. On the other hand, an employee in the Baby Boomer generation might prefer and engage better using an entirely different way of learning.

Training preferences may be tied to the skill level of the employee. An employee training tracker should be able to let you create different learning paths according to the skill sets of your employees.  You must make content relevant to them and not mandate a standardized structure on everyone equally.  Once you better understand these components, you can begin to choose a system for content delivery.  Adoption of the platform is essential so finding a user-friendly dashboard that is simple to navigate will better reach your training goals.  After all, you will spend time and energy creating and identifying content and it isn’t useful if employees are struggling to use their learning tool.  

Define system features that you need

Make a feature wish list and rank the most important to least important.   Now that you have clarified training objectives and mapped your audience preferences, the next goal is to determine what features you want in your employee training tracker system. Having a list of requirements for the tool you intend to use for your employee training and development programs will enable you to find the best fit when you go out in the market looking for it.

Here are the functional requirements that you must define for your organization:

User and course management

Quantify the number of users you want to train and the types of skills you want to convey and then define key requirements. This would include answers to questions such as:

• Define the method of user registration into the system. Will the user’s login on their own, or will a manager or administrator provide them access?
• Define the management requirements for the tracker. Would you want to assign different user roles such as administrators, course authors, managers, and learners?
• What is the type of training program you would like to deploy?  Is there a sequence of coursework that maps to a certification or proficiency level that you want them to achieve?

Learning models

What is the kind of learning model that suits the business requirements? 

• Pure learning, where the course is consumed entirely online, aided by assessments and certifications.
• M-learning, where the course is consumed on mobile devices.
• Blended learning, where the course is a mix of online training and offline/instructor classes.
• Social learning, where learners can share and discuss interesting educational content and progress with each other online.

Learning content

• What kind of training material will you offer to employees?
• Will you create the courses in-house or collaborate with a third party?
• What content and technologies are you going to use? What will be the formats – PDFs, docs, MP3s, MP4s, SCORM, AICC, Tin Can? Will you be embedding video links from places like YouTube or Vimeo into courses?
• Would you need a course editor to make changes as you go?

Tracking tools  

What kind of tracking tools would you want to analyze insights with?

• Do you need only individual progress metrics or do you also want detailed reports on teams, branch locations, and users?
• Do you want access to templates for customized reporting?

Adaptability and Integration

Will the tracker be able to incorporate changes into the system as they come? For example, if there is a large hire of new employees, will it be easy to reset the tracker to fit a larger number?

If you already have an existing system, the new software must integrate with it without creating complications. The employee training tracker must be compatible with the workflow that you are currently using. The platform you choose must also be compatible with your team. Your employees should be comfortable using it on a day-to-day basis to access courses when and where they want to. 
Investigate the market

Once you have listed out the features you need in your employee training tracker, start researching the available options in the market. The first step could be to ask people in your industry what they are using and how their experience has been. 

The second step would be to narrow down on the most talked-about solutions and go read their reviews and ratings online. Websites such as Capterra and G2 offer extensive reviews on many LMS solutions and provide solid ground for research.

Evaluate vendors

Once you have narrowed down the top 5 employee trackers that you might want to invest in, take your time to look into each of them in detail. Look through the websites of the solutions and see if the tracker matches up to your goals and feature list. See how long the vendor has been in the market and the kind of customers they have served. 

Look through the knowledge base on each site – like product documentation, how-to guides and video tutorials. Ask specific questions about the turnaround time of tech support and after-sales service. Find out if support is included or provided for extra fees. 

Test the tracker

Before you make the final decision of choosing an employee training tracker, it is important to test its demo or free version. Demos are key to getting a feel of the final product and how it works in your organization’s environment. During the free trial phase, you can test out all the capabilities of the tracker by uploading your courses and assigning them to demo users. 

Pay attention to the interface and how easily it lets you create, assign, manage and track your employee training and development programs. Upload your content in the format you have and see if it works on the devices where you want your employees to access them. Test, retest, and be completely satisfied before you make a final decision.

By taking all these features into account, you will be able to identify the functionalities that you need in your employee training tracker to achieve your training goals.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is the Perfect Solution

If you already have a corporate training model in place and want to test its effectiveness, a learning management system (LMS) can be the answer.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is an employee training tracker software that allows companies to manage, distribute and track their training programs. It is a great technological tool that can help you facilitate your learning process and use the insights to help your training programs get better with time. 

With the help of the right LMS, you can create employee training programs, assign courses to employees and track their progress, all in one place. With an LMS, you do not need a separate tracker for your training programs. 

Choose software that aligns with the needs of your company and budget. If you build the right strategy, it will be easier to choose the perfect LMS solution to meet your specific training goals. 

With the right LMS software, you can have your courses, LMS reports, analytics, and all other tracking tools in a single dashboard. If budget is a concern, you can try out a free LMS to test it out for your teams.