No matter your sector, you’re likely dealing with some kind of compulsory learning. We share exactly how you can better manage mandatory training for better business results.
There are plenty of businesses out there that are still relying on an excel spreadsheet and team leads to keep the status of training updated.
Ignoring the huge amount of human error that’s possible with this, it’s also incredibly laborious and time-consuming.
Keep reading to learn:
- What mandatory training is plus its challenges and benefits
- How trainers currently manage mandatory training
- Plus, a better way to manage your mandatory training
Let’s get started.
What is mandatory training?
Statutory and mandatory training are regulated and essential training required in the workplace.
The two slightly differ from one another.
Statutory training is legally required by an organisation in order to ensure its employees are compliant with laws and regulations.
Mandatory training is the essential training that an organisation requires in order for employees to be deemed competent and to meet any internal policies or standards.
While they’re not the same, they’re often used interchangeably as they hold such a similar level of importance in a work setting.
How to use an LMS for compliance training
Key challenges of mandatory training
For the rest of this blog, we’ll refer to both statutory and mandatory training as just mandatory training.
With both, there are a range of challenges that you might face.
Updates to training
The first, most obvious one, is version control. Often, mandatory training is updated to reflect new practices or new tools. How are you ensuring that all of your workforce is receiving the most up to date version of your learning?
And how are you tracking that they’re completing the right one?
Reporting on compliance
The second is reporting on your compliance rates.
Many organisations rely on outdated or clunky methods to deliver and track learning from multiple excel sheets, to even emails.
In order for you to properly prove that your workforce is adequately trained, you need to have the right reporting in place.
Recertification
Many courses require knowledge to be recertified after a number of years. Take first aid for example, you can’t do your first aid course once and be set for life. You need to renew your learning and get a new certificate to prove timely knowledge.
Without a proper way to manage your mandatory courses, you’re going to also struggle to manage both when employees need to recertify and also if they even have recertified.
Achieve better compliance in work
Benefits of mandatory training
While there are a few challenges in the way when it comes to managing mandatory training, the benefits are huge.
Of course, from a statutory point of view, there are fines and penalties for not complying with the required learning regulations.
But from a holistic point of view, there are huge benefits to investing properly in mandatory training when considering your employee knowledge, your business objectives and so much more.
We generally list the key benefits of mandatory training as:
- A better trained workforce is more likely to perform better which can improve results for customers, patients, partners etc
- People who feel like they are good at their job are more likely to stick around which means better job retention
- Employees who receive training are more likely to feel invested in and so can enjoy their job more
All of these come together to bring about better working conditions, and better user experiences too.
How are you currently managing your mandatory training?
Take a look at whatever method of training management you currently use.
Is it:
- A Google or Excel spreadsheet?
- A learning management system?
- Siloed documents on a team by team basis?
Here’s some of the ways you might be using each of these methods.
Google or Excel spreadsheet
In a spreadsheet, you might have all of your people listed, but if you’re dealing with more than 50 people, you already have a huge task of just keeping that people list up to date.
Even with just 50 learners, you need to list out every learning they are required to complete, and manually manage when they complete it and when they repeat it.
From there, you need to manually send out emails to remind them – whether your learning is online or offline. All of that is an awful lot of work, even for a workforce less than 100.
While a spreadsheet feels organised and clear, and you can do some clever reporting, it’s all very manual and human-reliant.
So, ignoring any human errors, you still have a huge reliance on receiving the right data from your learners, and you still have to take time to pull out any compliance reporting that could be needed at a moment’s notice.
Learning management system
A learning management system, or LMS, is a step into better learning technology.
With the right LMS, you can link your HR tools to automatically add new users. You can access better reporting to report on your compliance immediately. Plus, of course, you can host online learning directly on the platform which makes it easier to see who is engaging with what, and when.
Siloed documents
We often hear of some workplaces using documents, or even emails, to track what staff members have engaged with learning.
In some cases, they even list it by learning course, which is probably even more difficult to manage and report back on.
Siloed teams can be a really tricky challenge to overcome – especially when they’re all using different methods of tracking.
Better ways to manage mandatory training
We are a learning management system so of course we’re going to suggest one, but that doesn’t mean it has to be ours.
Considering the challenges of tracking mandatory training, let’s instead run through some key functionality you need – in one central location – to be able to better manage your learning delivery and reporting.
1. Centralised training management
An LMS allows you to centralise all of your training materials in one easy-to-access location.
No matter how many different teams you have, how many learners you have, or how much course content there is, you can put it in one home and set up a backend process that will save you an administrative headache.
With one centralised home for your training, you can ensure that employees can easily access the necessary courses, documents, and resources required for compliance.
You can upload health and safety training modules, data protection policies, and industry-specific regulatory guidelines and automatically assign them to the correct people (more on that next).
With your training accessible in one location, your learners can find the right content, and you can be sure that they’re getting the right version too.
2. Audiences and automations
One of the most difficult things with managing learning is the administrative headache.
With the right LMS, you can integrate your HRIS (or HR tool) to automatically upload new learners to your content.
And even better, with audiences and hierarchies, you can set up a bit of background work which will then feed those users the right content based on their core demographics.
So if you hire a new phlebotomist nurse for example, you can share your ‘Taking Blood Safely’ course which will give them a tick for being compliant.
Compare that then with another new starter, a neurosurgeon. They won’t have any need for that piece of content, so based on their job role and department, you can serve specific content.
3. Automated reminders and notifications
To maintain compliance, it’s important that employees complete their statutory and mandatory training by a given deadline.
When in the flow of work, it can be tricky to take the time out to do learning.
With an LMS, instead of you having to manually chase and remind users, your platform can automate reminders and notifications, ensuring that employees and managers are aware of upcoming training deadlines and renewal dates.
This helps in keeping the workforce up-to-date with their compliance requirements without manual intervention.
4. Tracking and reporting
A major benefit of an LMS is its ability to track and report on training progress and completion rates.
Detailed reports and analytics allow administrators to monitor who has completed required training and who hasn’t. This makes it easier to identify gaps and take corrective actions.
For instance, compliance officers can generate compliance reports to demonstrate adherence to regulatory bodies during audits.
5. Assessment and certification
As we mentioned, lots of statutory and mandatory training runs out and managing recertifications can be a minefield.
With an LMS, you can administer assessments and quizzes. Successful completion of these assessments can be linked to certifications, providing tangible proof of compliance.
These certifications can be tracked and stored within the LMS, making it easy to produce evidence of compliance when required.
For each certification, you can add a renewal date which will automatically prompt the learner to reengage with the learning ahead of that date.
The future of mandatory training
Mandatory learning isn’t going anywhere. However, there are always new features coming to LMSs that can make preparing and managing learning delivery easier.
From Totara’s AI capabilities in V20 to our very own gamification plugin, there are a whole host of features that you can bolt-on to your learning platform.
And that’s the joy of working with a tool like Totara. It’s open-source code means you can use it out-of-the-box, or you can tweak and develop it to become something more unique and bespoke to your needs.
Check out some of our case studies to see what we’ve created with our customers, or book a demo to see how our platform could help you better manage mandatory training.