Hi Wessel

Totara does have event monitoring where rules can be created and subscribed to to get notifications when the event rule has been triggered.

One of the Events is 'User graded' - unfortunately the subscribing to the rule is done by individual users and not able to be linked to groups of users such as managers.

There are some built in notifications for some activities controlled under Users profile > Preferences > Notification preferences but again this is at an individual user level. 

There is a feature request for a centralised messaging system that will help to manage all messages generated by Totara.

Regards