E-learning and LMS blog articles

What is the most valuable LMS feature for learning and development (L&D) professionals? While the answer may not be the same for everyone, there’s a feature that stands out as an absolute necessity among nearly all our clients, and that feature is LMS reports.

What makes reports so valuable for L&D professionals is the broad range of detailed insights that they provide with just a few clicks. From identifying skills gaps to tracking compliance, these insights are the key to unlocking the full potential of your people and your training programmes. Let’s explore just what LMS reports can do for you.

What are some of the benefits of LMS reports?

• Measure the ROI of your LMS and training programmes by measuring course effectiveness against training objectives
• Easily track and measure training outcomes on a wider scale, looking at the entire organisation
• Save hours of admin with automation and scheduled reports
• Easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of your L&D courses. Low engagement on a course? Try incorporating interactive elements or gamification
• Track, manage and monitor compliance and mitigate risk of non-compliance

Key reporting insights: learning and development breakdown

Let’s break down some of the key insights you can obtain from LMS reports.

Learner engagement

With just 10% of workers in Britain engaged, tackling employee engagement levels is a top priority for L&D professionals. Despite its importance, identifying and measuring learner engagement can be difficult without the right tools.

LMS reports can present quantifiable engagement data such as sign-on rates, course completion rates, time spent on a module, and the number of contributions to social learning activities such as discussion boards and group tasks.

By analysing learner engagement data, you’ll easily be able to see if certain courses are being completely ignored (could be a sign that they are outdated, poor UX, or even irrelevant!) or if they are getting great interaction and attention.

Knowledge retention

No matter how interactive, exciting, and comprehensive your training courses are, they are ineffective if learners do not retain the skills and knowledge acquired throughout the learning process.

How do you measure knowledge retention? Don’t wait for employees to make a costly mistake due to poor understanding and lack of knowledge. A thorough and effective solution here is to build LMS assessments such as end-of-course tests and refresher quizzes into your core training programmes. Here, reports can be configured to automatically distribute assessment results to the relevant people, helping managers or L&D teams identify knowledge gaps at an individual level or organisation-wide. This allows admins to quickly identify the ineffective courses that are producing poor knowledge retention and take immediate action to address this.

Track compliance

When it comes to compliance training, L&D teams simply cannot afford to let incomplete mandatory training go unnoticed. With LMS reports, admins can build a custom report to be scheduled and delivered directly to the inbox of key stakeholders. These reports will provide instant insights into who has or hasn’t completed mandatory compliance training, arming L&D and management teams with the tools they need to control and monitor compliance.

Quickly assess learner progression

For larger organisations delivering ongoing learning and development programmes to a large number of employees, it can be difficult to monitor learner progression on an individual basis. This is where the value of LMS reporting comes in as admins can create learner dashboards that present easy-to-read and up-to-date data such as competency scales, learning plan progression, and mandatory course completion. Rather than spending a great deal of time sifting through multiple reports, information is presented in one area, making it easy to monitor individual and group performance whilst gaining valuable insights into learning and development progress.

Learner feedback and satisfaction

Surveys and feedback mechanisms can also be vital in helping employers gain insights into employee satisfaction. Surveys can measure overall job satisfaction, or feedback tools can be used to dig down into how specific training courses and L&D activities are being received.

Using reports to collate feedback results, L&D admins can instantly see where their activities might be falling short of learners’ expectations, allowing them to make timely changes that will ultimately improve learner satisfaction and the ROI of training programmes.

Discover the power of Totara’s reporting tools

All too often, we hear the frustrations of L&D professionals looking to take advantage of LMS reports, only to find their platform doesn’t offer the breadth of functionality required to get the most out of this core LMS feature.

In comes Totara, with its powerful and flexible custom report builder that ensures L&D teams can extract vital information quickly and easily, without being over-complicated.

Admins of all LMS backgrounds can easily create new reports from scratch or take advantage of readily available and modifiable report templates. With a broad range of report types, from HR imports to monitoring the attendance of a live training event, admins can manage and monitor all aspects of the training process in one centralised platform. What’s more, with dedicated reporting dashboards presenting vital information in a visually appealing and user-friendly format, gone are the days of sifting through pages and pages of complex reports. With Totara, key insights and essential data are quite literally at your fingertips.

Like the sound of Totara?

It’s time you got to know our award-winning LMS system that provides essential insights into learning and development activities. Read our ultimate guide to Totara here or get in touch with one of our Totara experts to discover what our solutions can do for you.