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Benefits of Employee Training Tracking Go Far Beyond OSHA Compliance

August 2nd, 2017

Benefits of Employee Training Tracking Go Far Beyond OSHA Compliance

Tracking and maintaining accurate employee records is a foundation of any successful organization, and a strong training tracking system provides a valuable tool to enhancing and providing the valuable insight to companies that wish to improve the health and safety procedures. However, when companies track this important information via spreadsheets, paper documents, and without some level of organization, critical employee tracking information can get lost.

Why do you need to track training?

With technology rapidly advancing, and regulations constantly changing, keeping track of the growing number of training requirements can seem daunting. How can you be sure that all necessary training has been completed for safety and regulatory requirements? What if there is an accident, how can you demonstrate that you had taken every precaution? If there is an audit, will you be able to produce adequate documentation?

Many standards established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) require the employer to train employees in the safety and health aspects of their jobs. Employees require an array of training including standard operating procedures, equipment safety, environmental, health, and safety issues in order to perform their job in a safe manner.

Do you really need training tracking software?

How do you know if investing time and money in a system to track employee training is the right thing to do? Before deciding which tracking system to get, first consider if you need a tracking system at all. Here are some questions to consider:

  • When asked to provide statistics or summaries of needed or completed training, are you able to easily provide the information without spending a lot of time manually compiling data?

  • Are your training records kept up to date on a consistent basis?

  • Are your recordkeeping tasks simple enough that they do not take time away from other activities?

  • Is your current method easy to understand and use?

If your answered "yes" to all four questions, you might not need to make any changes in your current recordkeeping system. If you answered "no" to some or all of the questions, it might be a good idea to take the next step: implement or establish a training tracking system.

Why Use Software to Track Employee Training Requirements?

Software can help training managers to better organize their training program, as it allows them to consolidate all training courses in one convenient location, providing them with increased visibility into their company’s training processes and easier access to training data. Attachments, such as class attendance sheets, syllabi, test results, surveys, or training content, can be added to records, allowing training managers to build a comprehensive training library. Training managers can use filters and reports to cross-reference training responsibilities, identify employee deficiencies, and quickly see which roles require their training to be renewed.

Certainly the need for historical transactions data is required for regulatory, monitoring, or reporting purposes. It is often easier to simply enter the legacy data rather than migrate from a legacy system, However we often discover the historical data is required and provides tremendous value to the overall system. The daunting task of entering the historical data may appear overwhelming.

Software can make it easier to associate employee role(s) to the required or recommended training, along with automatic email notifications to remind employees, supervisors, and training managers. As a result, fewer workers may fall behind on training tasks, and training managers can minimize the number of employees operating without the proper training. Software can give training managers the tools they need to push deeper into training data, analyzing information to find out powerful insights in seconds.

Dakota Software’s Training Application Enable Advanced Analytics

In addition to streamlining and improving safety and training analytics, Dakota Software’s Training Application also allows for detailed reporting and analytics of training activity. Users can use dashboards, filters, and reports to swiftly determine the areas of their organization that are most compliant and up to date with training requirements, which areas are in need of improvement, and can use this data to make informed decisions about their organization’s training programs.

Dakota’s training module also easily integrates, via current API’s, to existing LMS or Human Resource systems, providing managers with the ability to keep employee information updated consistently across departments. It also features a user friendly data import tool that maps directly from excel spreadsheets to the fields within the training application. The import tool is bundled with a complete set of data cleansing analysis routines to aid in identifying data issues prior to importing.

In conclusion, Dakota’s training module can help organizations save valuable time and energy by organizing this critical data into a single system, reporting attendance, as well as helping them to easily track and identify trends in their companies' training activities, giving them increased visibility into their compliance obligations and overall safety performance


Click here if you’d like to learn more about Dakota’s Training Management solutions.

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