As the world of work changes, organisations are finding new ways to keep their workforce agile and adaptable. In order for organisations and its workforce to succeed, it should not depend on just a single finely-tuned skillset. Organisations have to strike a balance between doing something exceptionally well while trying out something extremely different. This is where workforce development plays a critical role.
The responsibility of equipping the workforce for the future should not solely rely on business leaders and the organisation itself. Instead, a robust workforce development approach should be centred on personalised learning, leadership, experiences and growth that ties in the evolving nature of jobs as well as workers’ potential to reinvent themselves. This is where a holistic training and development framework, supported by robust training systems, can help to create personalised learning opportunities for workers to reskill while equipping the organisation with strategies and tools needed to adapt to an uncertain future. Here are some ways in which training tracking systems can shape workforce development strategies to build a culture of efficiency and accountability.
Streamlined administrative processes: Automating enrollment, progress tracking and reporting
Training tracking systems are intended to manage the administrative aspects of training management, automating tasks that were once considered labour-intensive and highly prone to human or data-entry errors. Training management systems can significantly boost operational efficiency through:
Automated training enrollment
Having an automated request submission and approval workflow simplifies the training enrollment process for HR, employees as well as managers. Employees can have learning content automatically assigned to them depending on the nature of the jobs as well as their learning preferences. This enables employees to remain up-to-date with mandatory training courses while facilitating seamless self-enrollment personalised towards employees’ learning aspirations.
Real-time progress tracking
Training systems often come equipped with dashboards that enable HR and managers to quickly view employees’ training completion status. This real-time progress tracking allows HR to identify bottlenecks in completion of training courses and intervene promptly.
Effortless reporting
Generating comprehensive training reports often involve compiling data from disparate sources. A training system not only enables real-time progress tracking, but allows HR to generate detailed and customisable reports that offer deep insights into training completion rates, assessment scores and other critical key performance metrics that can be instantly communicated across all stakeholders.
Transparent records and enhanced accountability: Empowering employees and managers
Aside from automating the administrative aspect of training management, training tracking systems can help to foster a culture of transparency and accountability within the organisation by:
Offering self-service access
Providing employees self-service access to training tracking systems are highly effective in empowering them to take charge of their own learning journey. The ease of viewing their training records, browsing through available learning content and tracking their own learning progress encourages employees to take ownership of their own professional development, which in turn, encourages upskilling and cross-skilling.
Enabling oversight of team’s learning progress
Tracking employees’ training completion status and activities are essential for any manager, particularly from a compliance standpoint. Training tracking systems often come with a team dashboard that offers a holistic view of their team’s training activities, including relevant training that their team has enrolled in and completion progress. This oversight provides managers with accountability in ensuring that their team completes any mandatory training courses as well as recognising and supporting employees’ learning preferences.
Facilitating compliance tracking
Transparent and well-documented training records are essential to maintain compliance with industry regulations and certification requirements. Training tracking systems usually come with customisable reports that make regulatory audit prep straightforward and easy for HR to compile.
Cultivates continuous learning culture, translating into long-term benefits and organisational growth
A robust training tracking system goes beyond operational efficiencies and building accountability within the workforce. The benefits it brings allows organisations to make effective workforce development and learning and development strategies, which are essential to long-term growth and success.
Data-driven decision-making
The upside about training tracking systems is the vast amount of training data being collected, which can offer valuable data insights for strategic decision-making. This training data allows HR to analyse training trends, identify potential skills gaps, and assess the effectiveness of training initiatives, enabling HR and organisations to make data-driven decisions on fine-tuning and enhancing workforce development strategies.
Employee engagement & retention
Empowering employees to take charge of their own learning journey by providing self-service tools and clear visibility on learning opportunities is a great engagement and retention strategy. It sends a message to employees that the organisation is investing in employees’ personal and career growth. This concurrently boosts employee satisfaction levels while fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Operational efficiencies and accountability are part of the foundational pillars in building robust workforce development strategies. Training tracking systems simply serve as a catalyst to enhance and implement these strategies. By automating administrative training processes, this facilitates ease of tracking and reporting. At the same time, introducing self-service tools within the training tracking systems empower employees to take charge of their own learning progress while holding managers accountable in driving learning objectives within their own team. Such empowerment is an effective engagement and retention tool, while building an agile workforce that will enable the organisation to grow and thrive in the long run.