Business today is never static. It is constantly revolving and constantly changing. Policies and procedures change, processes change, and employees come and go. With this natural ebb and flow comes the need for an effective training process. This is important because employees can be considered to be the lifeline of the organization—keeping them knowledgeable and up to date on the processes that pertain to them is the key to maintaining a well-informed workforce.
This applies regardless of the industry you’re in, since most companies rely on people to keep the business functioning…aside from those who have replaced their workforce with robots of course. For the rest of us, there is an automated Training Management system to keep all employees cognizant of their tasks, so they can continue to do them well and to stay knowledgeable on changes that pertain to them.
So what constitutes a “good,” Employee Training Management System? Here are 5 tell-tale signs:
- Linking of Training Requirements: Linking Training Requirements gives you the ability to organize training by type—this means you can categorize by whether the training is quality-based, general human resources, and more. Based off of this information, you can then create requirements groups and training events centered on each type. This lets you ensure that the correct groups are receiving the right type of training.
- Automated Testing: A good Training System will have test recording. Without it, there’s really no way to tell if your employees have been properly trained or not. Testing allows you to assess the skills of those who are in our organization so you can see who knows their stuff and who needs study hall. Testing programs linked to Training Management provides assurance that the employee has received and passed the training qualification process. The Training Management System will also integrate testing into the training plans and pass/fail or percentage scores to assess their ability.
- Integration with Adverse Events: When an adverse event occurs, it is helpful to link investigations to the training record. Doing so will allow you to link an investigation back to the training records to see if re-training is required. It will also allow you to make sure prior training occurred. This can be applied to corrective action as well. Linking training to corrective action helps to uncover systemic training issues. Linking training records to the operational aspect of compliance helps increase visibility into the correlation of adverse events and employee training.
- Integration with Reporting: Visibility, visibility, visibility. You’ll hear this mentioned a lot on this blog and there is a very good reason. Simply put, it’s important. You can receive immense visibility into training with a reporting tool. Reporting gives you visibility into the data to analyze trends and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This helps improve operations overall and helps to mitigate risk. The Training Management System linked to reporting uncovers key trends and pinpoints poor training through reports on training effectiveness.
- Integration with Change Management: Change is inherent in everything—all organizations will experience the need for change at some point. Adverse events will often result in a corrective action, which may lead to the need for changed or reworked processes. This could be a change to the design or process, which will need to factor in training. If your Training Management System can integrate with Change Management, you will be able to foster continuous improvement in operational areas and employee development.
The takeaway is that the success of an organization relies on its people. To ensure your people are effectively trained, you need to have a good Training Management System in place. Training management helps you keep up with the pace of today’s rapid lifecycles. Good training management adds features like integration with adverse events, automated testing, and linked training requirements help make your life easier when it comes to the process. Using a Training Management System to ensure that your staff is effectively trained and continuously tested on that training will result in employees that are as knowledgeable and up to date on their responsibilities as possible.
Again, if you’ve already replaced your workforce with robots, then this doesn’t apply to you. However, in the event of a robot uprising, you may be interested in learning how to gauge such a risk with tools like Risk Management. You can never be too safe...