What Your Company Should Do Now
The reasons for implementing new software range widely, but few are as compelling as improving productivity and facilitating compliance. Tim Lozier of EtQ explains why keeping tabs on employee training is so important.
Every business wants to become more efficient and do more with less. At the same time, businesses across all industries must meet regulatory and compliance needs, which vary widely from sector to sector. There are many ways to boost productivity and compliance: operational efficiencies, new technologies, process improvement and more. But one area that can make a big difference is enhancing the capabilities of your workforce, through targeted training and development.
Benefits of Employee Training and Management
Developing employees is good for you and your workers. You build up your human capital, create more morale in the workforce, attract better talent, stay compliant and drive productivity. Your employees build their skills, prepare themselves for advancement, feel challenged and put more into their roles.
This is backed up by the statistics, too — 90 percent of millennials said that opportunities for development and career growth were important, and 40 percent of people who have poor training leave their job in the first year. Training is great for both attracting and retaining your key talent.
There’s just one issue: there are a lot of training requirements, methods, courses and more out there, so how do you keep up?
Using the Right Solution
Think of all your training needs and the various areas you must keep track of. It’s likely you will want to measure, track and report on:
- When employees are qualified or required to take certain courses
- Recommended training for specific employees based on business needs, compliance requirements, personal growth, new initiatives and technologies and productivity improvements
- The range and diversity of courses available
- Aligning the needs of your employee training program with the number of courses available
- Details of each course including cost, location, learning methods and employee feedback
- Tracking attendance and training hours
- Gap analysis between employees and the training they need
- Whether employees have completed the training
- Qualifications gained as a result of completing the training
It’s clear that you cannot track and manage all the training for your workforce on an ad hoc basis. Instead, you need a comprehensive employee training tracking software solution that integrates with your quality management and regulatory compliance systems.
The Benefits of Employee Training Tracking Software
In addition to solving the issues above, the right tracking software will give your organization some powerful advantages, including:
- Creating a strategic approach for all your employee training
- Keeping all your training records in one place
- Sorting training records by employee, team and department
- Building training into your on-boarding process, so every employee can hit the ground running
- Getting a broad perspective of training across your organization, and drilling down into specific areas
- Meeting your training-led regulatory needs
- Improving safety and compliance across the organization
- Proving the certifications, qualifications and licenses of your employees
- Completing more informed performance reviews and opportunities for promotion
And that’s not all. The right employee training tracking software can inform employees of their training needs, send out notifications and reminders, help with scheduling courses and report on training.
The data from training tracking software can be incredibly valuable when it comes to identifying the best courses, getting cost-effective training, tracking employee engagement and other workforce metrics.
The best software will also integrate with other parts of your quality management process and workforce apps to create a seamless training and reporting experience.
Tim Lozier is the Director of Product Strategy at 
