How to Improve Training Transparency with LMS Reporting and Tracking

Struggling to monitor training progress? Learn how to improve your training process and why your public sector organization needs LMS reporting software.

Article Highlights

• Problem: Your organization doesn’t have an efficient way to track employee training, resulting in a lack of transparency and difficulty maintaining compliance.  
• Solution:  Employee training tracking software enables your organization to track and meet all training requirements. 
• Benefits: Monitor and report on progress towards employee development goals, maintain training compliance, and cultivate a highly productive workforce.

The importance of tracking employee training can’t be understated. A robust tracking system doesn’t just ensure employees are up-to-date with any required certifications or licenses. It also helps employees meet their career goals and become more productive contributors to your organization.

But you’re probably aware that tracking employee development isn’t exactly easy. Regardless of the size of your organization, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to an effective employee training program, including: 

• Identifying organizational skill gaps
• Ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local training requirements
• Scheduling training 
• Reporting on employee training progress

In this post, we’ll cover the challenges associated with managing your employee training program. Then, we’ll discuss how NEOGOV’s Learn, a government LMS, enables your organization to efficiently track training progress, leading to increased transparency and numerous other benefits for your organization.

Problem: Lack of Transparency

Without comprehensive employee training tracking software, you’ve likely had to create your own systems to monitor employee compliance training programs. But Excel only goes so far when it comes to accurately tracking employee training, meeting compliance standards, and reporting on learner progress. Let’s discuss each of these challenges in more detail. 

Tracking Employee Training

If your organization doesn’t use employee training tracking software or LMS reporting systems, you may rely on managers or employees to self-report on training completion. This can lead to inaccuracies in tracking at best or non-compliance with federal and state-mandated training at worse. 

Without LMS reporting, it’s also difficult for employees to know when they last completed a training. This means that important training courses, such as those required to renew a license or keep certification up-to-date, could fall through the cracks and put your organization at increased risk of liability. 

Poor tracking methods can also make it more difficult for managers or supervisors to track employee progress and growth. Without a clear understanding of what training an employee has completed, managers can’t coach employees on what other training courses may help them reach their career goals.

Limited Reporting Capabilities

Limited reporting capabilities mean that your organization can’t review records to identify training gaps and make informed decisions about what training should be offered moving forward. For example, your organization may have a goal for each employee to complete antiracism training. But if you can’t run a baseline report about what training employees have completed in the past, you won’t know what additional training your organization must offer to meet diversity, equity, and inclusion training goals. 

Similarly, without the benefit of LMS reporting features, your organization can’t generate reports to demonstrate compliance with federal or state law – or even with your own organizational policies. Instead, you have to spend time organizing records to track learner progress and meet reporting requirements with state or federal law. Not only is this cumbersome, but it also takes time away from other important initiatives that help cultivate a robust professional development program.

Meeting Compliance Standards

Limited tracking capabilities also mean your organization may struggle to meet compliance standards set by other government agencies. That’s because human resources and hiring managers must play an active role in reminding employees to complete training. If this isn’t done proactively, employee certifications and licenses can expire, exposing your organization to liability. 

Additionally, your organization must meet certain new hire training requirements, like offering employee benefits and compliance training. All public organizations must provide family and medical leave to employees. If your organization fails to provide employees with these and other benefits, it can face penalties. But without proper tracking, your organization may not be able to prove that individuals have received proper education about employee benefits in compliance training sessions.

Solution: Government LMS

You don’t need to struggle with a lack of training transparency any longer. NEOGOV’s Learn is designed for the tracking, reporting, and compliance needs of government HR professionals.

Tracking

Learn provides a centralized place for you to keep accurate records for all types of training, including: 

• Compliance training
• Elective training
• Online training
• Classroom training 

After signing into Learn’s dashboard, supervisors see a list of their direct reports and any required training tasks. Managers and supervisors can quickly identify the current status of training efforts and whether or not individuals still need to complete any required training, such as employee benefits or compliance training. This dashboard even lists overdue tasks, ensuring nothing is forgotten.  

Learn’s training tracking software also facilitates conversations about learning goals between managers and employees. Supervisors can see the full training history of any employee they supervise, including records of enrolled and completed employee compliance training. Individuals can also filter through information to drill deeper into an employee’s progress on certain learning plans and use chart filters to sort by certain learning attributes. Using this data, managers can discuss an employee’s career goals and additional learning opportunities that might help employees achieve them.

Reporting

Learn’s Training Activity Report enables HR professionals to easily monitor and report on training progress. Using Learn’s LMS reporting, administrators can export information like attendance data, quiz scores, and completion rates to serve as proof of completion. Your organization can then send these reports to relevant agencies to demonstrate compliance with training standards and requirements. These LMS reporting features are detailed in the table below.

Compliance

Finally, your organization can maintain compliance with federal and state training standards using Learn’s automated notification system. Our LMS reporting software monitors the issue and expiration dates for all employee certifications and licenses. Both manager and employee receive notifications when a license or certification is about to expire, giving the employee sufficient time to apply for renewal. 

Similarly, Learn sends automated notifications to both the supervisor and employee when required training is coming due (or is already overdue). This ensures that HR professionals, managers, and employees can plan for any upcoming required training to maintain compliance with third-party agencies.

Benefits of a Government LMS

The importance of tracking employee training is clear. Fortunately, our LMS reporting features offer numerous benefits to help your organization track training in a transparent, efficient, and effective way. 

Not only does Learn promote compliance with state and federal regulations but it also helps reduce your organizational liability. As your organization tracks employee completion of required training, you can prove that you’ve done your training due diligence. This is particularly helpful for cases of employee misconduct. You can also use Learn to monitor individual, departmental, and organizational progress towards these and other training goals. 

Additionally, Human Resources can use our learning management system to access a pre-built course catalog of more than 1,400 classes. This training material was built specifically for public sector organizations, so employees gain knowledge and skills that meet their unique needs as public servants. This lets HR professionals spend their time on other important tasks. 

All of this means that employees have access to stellar professional development opportunities from the moment they start working at your organization. Help new hires be productive and compliant from day one with new employee compliance training. Then, leverage learning management system features to build employee skills and keep fostering their development by monitoring training progress and promoting continued learning opportunities to maximize their potential.

Final Thoughts

Given the importance of tracking employee training, there’s no excuse not to invest in a comprehensive reporting tool. NEOGOV's Learn provides government agencies with all the features needed to improve training transparency. If you’re excited to learn how our LMS reporting features can take your training compliance program to the next level, sign up for a free demo today.