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Hi John, we have healthcare clients who are starting to use (very detailed!) competency framewborks to do this - considering the gap between competency required and competency achieved to be the learning need.

(but then, learning needs don't equal training plans because a learning need could be fulfilled with a variety of training interventions - as a slight aside we encourage line managers to be accountable for the learning needs of their staff, but for them to defer to HR/L&D department as the best people to decide how to fulfil that requirement).

That said, there's a realisation that this process means that organisations "get what they ask for" and it's hard to capture those learning needs which don't fit into competencies, or cover a number of competencies.

For this reason, I'd vote for a more flexible personal development planning process in Totara.

Tim

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Hi Tim

For learning needs that don't fit into competencies it is possible to add these as Objectives in the learning plan.

The Objectives can be analysed through site wide reports in the report builder using the Record of Learning Objectives source in conjunction with the competencies to identify training needs.

If you are wanting demographic or other data to be included for the analysis then these could be added as a custom field on the user's profile and this would be available to the report builder.

If you can get managers to be involved in the process for training their staff using the approval process in the learning plans then this would also help.

Craig

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Hi John,

Gap Analysis, which is on the roadmap, may go some way to meeting your requirements.

Andy

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Hi John

We currently do Training Needs Analysis through a small customisation of the Feedback Module.

We use the Feedback module to ask the staff member questions relating to their skills/knowledge/experience. This is easy enough, but does call on some discipline in not asking too many questions.

The customisation is:

when the staff member commits their input, it then passes a 50% score to the gradebook
this triggers an email to their manager asking them to review the feedback input (the message includes a url to directly access it)
when the manager has reviewed (and changed/updated it as necessary) the feedback module they Commit it. This then passes a 100 score to the gradebook.

Analysis of the data is easy enough via an Excel export:

No score = no staff member input,
50% = staff member has input but their manager hasn’t reviewed it,
100% = the data has been input by the staff and confirmed by the team leader.

This customisation of the Feedback module has proved useful for many other things. We’ve used it for voluntary redundancy, nominations for leadership programmes, nominations for awards, and for staff confirming their required / preferred desktop applications in a Windows upgrade.

But, it's not our future direction:

We’re now moving away from this approach and through the use of Competencies and Individual Development Plans (Learning Plans) building a more dynamic record of business capability. The key detail in this change is that we are using the LMS to record current ratings in Competencies and all development activities (seminars / conferences / workplacement / readings / projects / team activities / participating in more complex work) in addition to training activities. This change is necessary as a large chunk of our business is moving to an Operations Management module (Workware) and we need to fold in the low level defined Tasks (and ratings), rolled up into Competencies, then mapped to development activities.

Cheers
Austen

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Thanks Amir,

Wich is the process to test the database activity you sent in our Totara LMS installation?