How to Select the Best HRMS for Your Training Needs

Training data is often an overlooked and underutilized resource, with many companies only doing the absolute minimum needed to remain compliant with essential regulations. In reality, however, training data can be useful input into strategic workforce planning. In addition, as many companies already store HR training data within HRMS training modules, the additional effort required to utilize this data is often minimal when compared to the advantages it can bring.

If your organization has a heavy development culture or is highly specialized in its training needs, specialized HRMS training functionality is a must.

What kind of training data should we store? It is necessary to get beyond the traditional ‘classroom’ mentality of storing roster data, such as who attended what course. Instead, we need to think ahead, to be able to proactively develop employees, and identifying in advance who should be attending courses, based on the other data stored in your HRMS software such as job details and time with the company. For example, when competencies are attached to jobs and workers are ranked against competencies in an HRMS training module, then it’s easy to predict where employees have gaps that training can fulfill. Such activities can add value to the workforce and your future planning processes.

Heavy Development Culture

So do I need a training HRMS module or an entire system devoted to training, i.e. a Learning Management System (LMS)? Both of these specialized training systems have developed in recent years—they are top notch at capturing traditional training data as well as having more bells and whistles such as allowing for automatic management approval for training enrollment. Some of these also store course content, such as online courses or enable the creation of in-house online courses. If your organization has a heavy development culture or is highly specialized in its training needs, specialized HRMS training functionality is a must.

If you are a smaller company or training needs are not as intense, often you will be able to select a wider range of HRMS solutions, as many have some basic training functionality included. Data that can be stored ranges from basic employee details such as schools and degrees to roster basics and tracking training attendance. Some also have some tracking of employee certification or licenses, or languages spoken by employees. In addition, many allow for the tracking of employee skills, so it is possible to see where employee knowledge is held or still needed. Even if you only start with a small piece of this functionality, you can normally enable it over time in order to see how useful it can be as a part of overall employee development.