5 Tips for Choosing the Best Training Record Management System in 2022
Keeping your safety training records in order brings many advantages. First of all, you can easily tell which courses have been completed by each employee. When assigning tasks that involve risks, you can easily find qualified workers. A clear training record is also helpful when you get a safety audit, since you can show that your staff is trained as required by local regulations.
If your company is small, an Excel spreadsheet might be enough to manage your training records. However, this task becomes more difficult as your workforce grows: data entry can consume many hours, and human errors are more likely. With a dedicated Training Record Management System or TRMS, you can easily manage this data in a large organization.
Safety technologies and regulations are constantly evolving, and your company can only keep up with a well-organized training program. Here we will discuss 5 important factors to consider when comparing training record management systems in 2022.
1) Task Automation
When you use spreadsheets to manage safety training, many tasks must be completed manually. These include data entry, updating records, sending messages, and creating reports. However, a good Training Record Management System or Learning Management Software can automate these tasks for you.
In a large organization, a TRMS can save you many hours of repetitive work. You can also forget about updating records manually each time there is a new course since the software does it automatically. If there is a safety audit you didn’t expect, all the training information will be up-to-date. When a training certificate is about to expire, you get an automatic notification to get it renewed on time. Automation not only saves time, it also prevents stressful situations!
Automation can also be used for more complex tasks. For example, you can use an LMS to create training programs automatically, based on the responsibilities of each employee and the courses available. You can also configure automatic reports that get updated at regular intervals, and sent to managers and supervisors with each update.
2) Smart Reports and Analytics
Computers can understand raw data with ease, but we humans must organize information into charts and metrics first. Preparing reports is another task that can be time-consuming for your safety managers, but a TRMS can generate them automatically within seconds. You can also customize these reports according to the needs of your company.
These automated reports offer many benefits: they can help you find training gaps that are not evident when looking at raw data, or you can track progress for recently assigned courses, to mention a pair of examples.
3) Online Training Matrix
Along with automation, an online training matrix is one of the most useful functions you can have in a Training Record Management System. Instead of picking courses individually for each employee, you can use a smart table that assigns them automatically.
• Having a training matrix is helpful for your entire organization, since you can add any role: electricians, welders, heavy equipment operators, etc.
• Based on the skills required in each job, the training matrix can load the full list of available courses, creating a customized program for each employee.
Eventually, you will have a training matrix that covers all roles in your organization. You can also customize training requirements by city, meeting the safety regulations of each jurisdiction. An online training matrix is especially useful when hiring new employees: you can simply add their role and location, and the matrix generates a training program that meets local requirements.
4) Mass Uploading
For a small organization using an Excel spreadsheet, data entry is a quick and simple task. However, adding new records and updating existing ones can be a full-time job (that nobody wants) in a large company. Mass uploading is a great feature to have in a Training Record Management System, since it saves hours and hours of data entry.
When a large multinational company needs to upload thousands of training records or certificates, the value of mass uploads is evident. This information can also be filtered and organized in bulk, which also saves plenty of time.
5) Having a Free Trial
Being able to try a TRMS before your purchase is a useful feature, since you can make sure the software meets the needs of your company. You can get familiarized with the interface and features before your purchase, and you can see how well it integrates with your other apps and software. The last thing you would want is purchasing an expensive software without trying it, only to find that it doesn’t suit your company.
Summary
With a Training Record Management System, your company can handle training data with an efficiency that is not possible with simple spreadsheets. Repetitive tasks like data entry are automated, you can generate reports from large amounts of data in an instant, and you can find training gaps more easily. However, you need to pick a TRMS that actually includes these functions, or your training department will still have to deal with repetitive tasks and time-consuming reports.
