Two basic questions to keep in mind as a manager in L&D:

  • Is your training and development program doing the right things?
  • Are you executing the training and development program efficiently?

In creating your training program you must support your strategic business objectives. To do that requires working with your stakeholders and doing critical analyses, and it requires regular review to ensure that you continue to cover the critical needs, as well as the training, certifications, and other requirements laid out by regulations and law. In other words, you need to document that your programs are doing everything that is required to meet objectives and accountabilities.

On the other hand, you also need to track the way that the requirements are being executed. Tracking the fundamental measures is boring and routine, but it is still important. Even though current thinking from experts sometimes seems to discount this, stakeholders and others will always want to know, or know that you know, whether your program is fulfilling the details of three measures:

  • Status of compliance training
  • The status of required certifications
  • How those being trained (employees and customers) are responding

There may be other measures that depend on your particular strategic business objectives, but those three are the basics. Choosing the right software to facilitate the collection and analysis of the information is an important concern.

Compliance training

Employees in some industries or jobs may be required to complete certain specific training, and in some cases, all employees may be required to complete other training. The best known of these requirements are established for knowledge of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) rules and other safety regulations. In some cases, completion of compliance training may be a condition of employment. In other cases, this training may be more general in nature, dealing with human resources requirements. This type of training is most often documented in LMS (Learning Management System) or LXP (Learning Experience Platform) software. Contractor personnel may also be required to complete certain compliance training. Documentation of attendance or completion may be the only requirement; test scores may or may not be recorded.

Where to find software for your LMS/LXP shortlist

There are a number of software review sites online. The reviews on these two sites contain specific user reviews and guidance that will help you identify the learning management products that are most likely to identify your situation.

Certifications

In highly regulated industries or occupations, formal certifications may be required for individuals or teams. Sometimes these certifications are licenses to perform certain specific professional duties or safety-related procedures. Certifications may be required for contractors or consultants. A certification normally requires passing a performance test or a written examination, often on an annual basis, and this may be recorded in a database or in the form of an actual certificate in a paper file. In some cases these are legal records.

Where to find software for tracking certifications

Tracking certifications and their expiration dates may be handled by an LMS, or by specific certification tracking software. These three sites have reviews of the latter type of systems.

Survey results

In some cases, organizations may require employees to respond to surveys in order to record their satisfaction with the training received, their suggestions for improvement of the training, or to identify skill or knowledge deficiencies. This information may also be captured in a more general employee satisfaction survey.

Surveys can be useful in assessing the results in another important area: they may provide information about the effectiveness and coverage of customer training, as well as customer satisfaction with the training.

Where to find software for your survey shortlist

These links will take you to tailored lists of survey software that you can consider using.