Compliance training is complex and time-consuming to administer! If you are like most L&D professionals compliance-related training is taking up most of your day. Many L&D managers are rightly asking themselves if this is valuable use of their skills and expertise. Is this really offering strategic value to the organisation?
L&D is a people business. It’s about building capability and aligning that with the organisational objectives and if people are an organisations key asset then L&D is a key enabling role for organisational growth. L&D professional’s time and expertise needs to be at the strategy level and not administering compliance training.
So how do we do it? In this blog we will illustrate how Totara Learn can help with freeing up your time to focus on Strategy and organisational growth. Totara Learn manages compliance training using the functionality of Programmes and Certifications. Let’s first take a look at what these are.
What is a programme? -The Totara Learn programme functionality allows a course or set of courses to be assigned to learners with a specific time frame for completion. The sequence of courses can be dictated, and it can combine online as well as face-to-face courses.
In other words – you can easily manage:
• WHAT needs to be covered
• HOW it should be covered (e.g. sequencing of learning)
• WHO needs to do the training
• WHO needs to know using extensive notification manager
• WHEN it needs to be completed by
So, for example an Induction programme can be created where learners have to do ‘Health and Safety’ course and then ‘Manual Training’ within e.g. 60 days from programme enrolment day.
Learner’s view when accessing the Induction programme:
This would set a relative due date for every learner, depending on their enrolment date. However, a set date can also be used in cases where all learners need to complete the training by the same date.
Programmes also allow management of recurrent training where the same course needs to be completed regularly.
Certifications – certifications are like programmes but allow the enforcement of training expiry and recertification. Initial certification and recertification can even be separate learning paths (initial training and a refresher course for example).
In other words you can manage:
• WHAT needs to be covered
• HOW it should be covered (e.g. sequencing of learning)
• WHO needs to do the training
• WHO needs to know using extensive notification manager
• WHEN it needs to be completed by and
• HOW OFTEN training must be repeated
For example, your learners need to complete a Health and Safety course every 2 years, so when they complete the course that is assigned as part of original certification path they will be marked as certified and in 2 years an automatic reminder to completed the recertification path will be sent.
Learner view after they are assigned the certification:
Learner view after the original certification path is completed:
When a learner completes the original certification path on the 11th January 2018 they will need to do a course that is assigned as the recertification path in 2 years (due date 11th January 2020) and a recertification window will open for them e.g. 3 months before the certification expiry date to allow them enough time to cover the required content. Totara will send an automated message to the learner, and if required – the learner’s manger, to remind them that the course needs their attention on the 11th October 2019.
With easily configurable settings it is possible to:
• Define content which needs to be covered as part of a programme or certification
• Assign users to programmes and certifications based on a number of variables e.g. department, position or custom profile fields etc.
• Send out automatic notifications to learners and their managers at different stages of certifications or programmes e.g. enrolment, recertification window open message, certification completion message, programme due message etc.
• Monitor and track completions records
• Create and schedule reports, as well as link them to dashboards
No more spreadsheets, and tedious completions tracking! Totara Learn will provide reports of completions at the click of a button – making it easy for you and your learners to manage mandatory training.
The only question remaining is, what are you going to do with your free time?
