Managing Training

Training has a shape much like recruitment — a small amount of setup, then a repeating cycle:

Type → Program → Session → Attendance → Assessment

Everything is under Talent & Growth → Training & Development.

Set up: training types

Go to Training & Development → Training Types.

A type is the category training falls into — technical, compliance, onboarding, leadership. Types can be associated with departments, so the right training is offered to the right people.

Set these up once. They are how you answer “how much compliance training did we do last year?” later.

Set up: training programs

Go to Training & Development → Training Programs.

A program is a course that can be run more than once — “Fire Safety Awareness”, “Advanced Excel”, “New Manager Induction”. It carries the description, the type, and how long it takes.

Programs are the template, sessions are the event

This is the distinction that makes the module make sense. The program is the course; a session is one actual running of it, on a date, with people in it.

One program, many sessions, over years. Getting this the wrong way round — a new “program” for every occurrence — makes the history useless.

The cycle: schedule a session

Go to Training & Development → Training Sessions.

A session is one running of a program: a date and time, a trainer, a location or link, and the people attending.

There is also a calendar view, which is the better way to see whether you have accidentally scheduled three things in the same week.

1. Add a session and choose its program.

2. Set the date, time and duration.

3. Assign the trainer — internal or external.

4. Set the location, or the link if it is remote.

5. Add the attendees.

Check the calendar and the leave calendar

Two clashes are worth ruling out before you confirm a session: other training in the same week, and people already on approved leave that day.

The second one is the one that gets missed, and it is the one that wastes a trainer’s day.

The cycle: record who actually attended

Go to Training & Development → Employee Trainings.

This is the record of which employee did which training — the answer to “has this person been trained on X?”, which is the question the whole module exists to answer.

Attendance is recorded against the session. Do it on the day.

Unrecorded attendance is training that did not happen

As far as the system, an auditor, or a client asking about compliance is concerned, training with no attendance record did not occur.

For compliance-related training in particular, the record is the deliverable. The session was just how you produced it.

The cycle: assess

Go to Training & Development → Training Assessments.

An assessment checks what people took away — a test, a practical, a sign-off. Results are recorded per employee, so “attended” and “passed” stay separate facts.

Not every program needs one. Compliance and safety training usually does; a lunchtime talk does not.

This screen may need a higher permission level

Training Assessments is not reachable by every account that can see the rest of the module — a plain HR account can be refused it while the company administrator is not.

If you get a permission error here, that is a permissions setting rather than a fault. Ask your administrator.

Putting a course on, start to finish

1. Check the program exists. If not, create it — and create a program, not a one-off.
2. Schedule the session: date, trainer, location.
3. Check for clashes — other sessions, and approved leave.
4. Add the attendees.
5. Tell them. The system holds the schedule; it does not reliably invite people.
6. Run it.
7. Record attendance the same day.
8. Run the assessment, if the program has one.
9. Record the results.

Common questions

Are people notified automatically? Do not rely on it — automated mail depends on your email configuration, and if that is not set up nothing is sent and nothing warns you. Tell attendees directly.

Somebody missed a session. Record them as absent rather than removing them. “Was scheduled and did not attend” is a different and more useful fact than “was never scheduled”.

Can we run the same program twice? Yes — that is exactly what programs and sessions are for. Add another session.

External training somebody did elsewhere. Record it under Employee Trainings so the person’s record is complete, even if there was no session here.

How do I prove somebody is trained? Their Employee Trainings record, plus the assessment result if there was one. Which is the reason to record both promptly.