How to maintain training records in the workplace - Intro
For organizations in 2023, training is a massively important part of upskilling your employees, whether that be in the form of compliance, safety, corporate education, awareness training, skills development, and many more.
Related: Tips to Maintain Training Records Within your Company
With all this training, companies need to hold onto training records to retain and assess performance and report on compliance to relevant regulatory organizations, but how to maintain records in the workplace?
Well, there’s a mixture of ways.
Here are a few ideas that we recommend.
- Get a Learning Management System (LMS).
- Look at platforms like SharePoint.
- Develop a document retention policy.
- Digitize your training records asap.
Related: 5 Essential Reasons for Employee Training Records (linkedin.com)
When it comes to workplace training, either in a corporate setting or a more blue-collar environment, training is happening (or should be) all the time, day in, day out.
With all these data points around training being collected, it does beg the question of how to maintain training records in the workplace.
One thing to note is an organization’s training records will probably be multi-faceted.
Some could be physical files held in archive folders; some will be digital, e.g., online, stored in OneDrive or SharePoint; and others may be stored off-site via companies such as iron mountain storage.
Long story short, you’ll probably be working with many different types of records, but how can you maintain those records that keep the data safe and enable you to keep the documents and use them as and when necessary?
There are also numerous benefits of keeping and maintaining training records more effectively.
- Enables data-driven decisions based on training results.Allows learning leaders to know who has participated in which training.
- Shows success or failure of corporate training programs.
- Displays professional development strategies through training.
- Ensures compliance is upheld throughout an organization.
So let’s have a cracked at answering our question, how to maintain training records in the workplace.
Below I’ve added what I think are the best methods of maintaining training records in the workplace, starting from my favorite techniques.
1. Get yourself an LMS (Learning Management System).
How to maintain training records in the workplace? (All Details!)
This is the most critical piece of technology you can purchase when it comes to maintaining workplace training records.
An LMS allows you to roll out both ILT and VILT training and online eLearning courses in a quick, easy, and engaging way that employees should enjoy, when thinking how to maintain training records in the workplace.
They are also great platforms for collecting training record data such as completion rates, what quiz questions employees had trouble with, starting rates, analytical data on what training is remaining to be taken, manager overview of training for their teams, checklists, as well as a record of all written documentation, video-based learning resources, and all online course and learning path data.
There are also so many LMS solutions, with a dedicated person or team working through the assessment process and developing grading charts, rubrics, and implementations.
2. Host your training records within cloud infrastructure
How to maintain training records in the workplace? (All Details!)
So how to maintain training records in the workplace with cloud infrastructure? With native cloud environments so prevalent now, from Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, hosting your training records in the cloud as well as locally is a genius organizational move.
It makes sense to house any final training resource that doesn’t require editing or changing to host them in the cloud due to ease of access and better protection than storing locally.
Related: WHY TRANSFER YOUR ONLINE TRAINING FOR CLOUD STORAGE
There are also so many options out there, from google drive to OneDrive to SharePoint online; you should choose the option that is best for your organization through a valid technology assessment with your IT team.
The risk of losing data from physical or locally stored files is considerably higher, especially if a data server goes down for any reason. Still, you have more scope for protecting your data with the cloud.
As well as having storage in the cloud for your training records, don’t forget that hard copies are still needed; it’s always good to have both as you may need direct access from time to time, which is essential.
An excellent example of this is if you are creating an eLearning course in Articulate Storyline, having files in the cloud won’t cut it; as Storyline is a desktop-based program, you need the. story files accessible on your local desktop, so have the copy on your desktop and upload to the cloud when needed.S
3. Automate manual training processes.
How to maintain training records in the workplace? (All Details!)
Many companies manually track and maintain training records, usually by Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
These could be sign-up sheets for in-person training, tracking spreadsheets, matrix documents, and skills gap analysis documents, amongst many others.
The key is moving to a more automated, digital format that allows for a more dynamic workflow where data can be changed as and when needed.
This really helps for reporting purposes and provides a more well-rounded process for generating data that leaders can use to make ongoing decisions about learning.
There are also risks associated with manual processes around training, especially when it comes to human error. A missed notification here missed email being sent out there can have dire consequences or, at the very least, need clarification with employees not fully knowing what they need to do or not understanding training timelines. Automating these processes can increase your training team’s efficiency when managing your training records and data.
Automating notifications can be a huge bonus; you can see what training employees still need to do, managers can see their team’s progress, and you can check what certificate expirations are upcoming.
Frankly, automation is by far one of the most exciting ways of how to maintain training records in the workplace.
4. Use a robust reporting engine.
How to maintain training records in the workplace? (All Details!)
Pulling reports is necessary when running a training team or delivering training. You can do this manually within a spreadsheet, but using an LMS is a better solution.
Reporting for training is vital to understanding where gaps are, what percentage of learners still need to complete training courses, the analytics of learner participation, and the organization’s training needs.
Related: Automated Training – Free Up Your Team to Focus on More Meaningful Tasks
Training reporting can also illustrate where a lack of knowledge or competence exists, this could be from assessment and quiz results, or you could even plug your LMS into an LRS (Learning Record Store), to get more granular details through JavaScript statements.
Reporting can be a great tool and when we think about how to maintain training records in the workplace, it’s totally necessary to provide great reporting for director level leaders to make good decisions.
Reporting is critical, primarily where you can provide scheduled reports to your organizational leaders, giving them the details, they need to make strategic data-driven decisions.
5. Use a video hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo
How to maintain training records in the workplace? (All Details!)
As a training developer, video is a must in 2023 and beyond. Whether it be explainer videos, software tutorials, or something else, video files can be massive, so what to do with them?
Well, ensure you upload the rendered video training onto a site like YouTube, Vimeo, or even Stream if you’re core Microsoft users.
Also, one thing from experience is never to delete any source files; you never know when you’ll need them, so get yourself a good set of large hard drives, HDDs, and SSDs.
Video training has impressive engagement rates, way more than written material, so you should create it for your learners if it meets the requirements.
When storing training records, due to the large file sizes, you should always compress to the point before it degrades the video quality; my advice is to render to H.265, which should give great quality and still be a lossless codec.
For corporate video work, Vimeo seems to be a better option; it has more features around control and restricting access to videos, whereas YouTube is the more recognized and global platform, but maybe not as suited for an organization that wishes to keep most videos private.
Final Thoughts
Thanks for joining us for this discussion about how to maintain training records in the workplace.
As a member of an L&D team, maintaining training records is essential for organizational reasons and ensuring you can make accurate decisions regarding corporate learning.
The best way is to have a multi-pronged approach, looking at all records, from writing to locally stored to the cloud and materials you have on your learning management system.
When it comes to the answer to the question of how to maintain training records in the workplace, you need to ensure that everything is safe, easy to find places from a legal or compliance standpoint, but also make it easy to keep track of what is happening regarding training in your organization.
Make sure to automate as much as possible when looking into storing training records. This is important for actions such as renewing certificates once they’ve expired, keeping up with user management, pre-populating digital training record fields, and helping with new course uploads.
Don’t forget to have a robust reporting suite available to you; this will enable your leadership team to have the data they need to make decisions that are in the best interest of your company.
Whether you are working in an office environment or out on a construction site, keeping training records safe is truly important and is a task that will help you as a trainer in the long run.
Overall, follow the five strategies we’ve outlined in this post. It would help if you had everything you need to maintain your training records effectively and ensure that you keep everything in its place so you can easily find and allocate them when you need them.
Thank you so much for reading, and we hope this post has helped you in your training organizational training record storage strategy.
Let us know how you get on with maintaining your training records.
Hey, I’m Kris Taylor. I’m a Learning and Development professional currently in the healthcare field, with over 8 years of experience in the area of corporate education. I have created numerous instructional content for various corporate projects including eLearning, in-person facilitation, and virtual training across a wide variety of learning interventions and sectors. On Taughtup, I discuss topics ranging from how to succeed through K-12 to college all the way to instructional design tips for L&D designers.
