Overdue Training as a Corporate Goal

[ward_scott]

We have been struggling lately with employees not keeping up with their learning plans. As a result, we are considering using this as one of our corporate goals next year.

We are considering using the percentage of employees with overdue training (but that does not take into account how many overdue items exist, or how severely overdue they may be.) We have also considered the average number of overdue items per employee (but that number is low at 0.8 and does not indicate any sense of urgency, nor does it take into account how severely overdue they may be.)

Does anyone out there have goals or metrics that you use to monitor overdue training? If so, what are you tracking and - if you don't mind sharing - what is the goal and/or your current status?

[nadeem_a]

we simply began with an underlying aim of reducing our overdue training by 50%, as it's really difficult to say what a good number would be.

We started by identifying the worst offenders and found a small number of people causing a high proportion of overdues. We also began to publish overdue training stats by function and sharing them with the business. This teased out technical problems with content, users who had the wrong training assigned, and users who were no longer with the business. We've reduced our overdue training by approx 80% so I'd say it's been pretty effective.

We're now looking at how we reduce the ageing profile of our overdue training.

[ward_scott]

It took 18 months, but we finally have our overdue training to "acceptable" levels. "Acceptable" is said with some reluctance, but we have not had manufacturing-related training overdue for a few weeks and it looks like we will be able to maintain our metrics. Most significantly, we have our supervisors now taking ownership and working to keep their employees up to date. We have submitted an AABB abstract on our process but, for those who do not have access, I will copy it here. I hope it helps anyone else having similar issues:

Using Metrics and Accountability to Improve Training Compliance

Background/Case Studies: E-learning modules, procedures, on-the-job, and regulatory required training is scheduled and managed with a learning management system (LMS) to maximize adherence to organizational timelines. The LMS notifies staff and supervisors in weekly emails to perform training within specified timelines.

Delinquent training is reported to the Quality Assurance Committee on a quarterly basis as part of the quality system effectiveness review.  After reviewing trends in non-compliance to training timelines, an initiative to create awareness amongst staff and leadership to manage accountability was initiated. Spearheaded by an executive sponsor in 2020, Blood Center management provided feedback to develop the key compliance metrics. Tools were created and implemented to provide standardized data elements by which staff and leadership could monitor for compliance.

Study Design/Methods: Weekly overdue training reports were provided to the executive sponsor, QA director, and HR director beginning in late 2020 and continue to present day. In January 2021, supervisors were notified of the focus to reduce overdue training and were provided with tutorials on how to utilize the LMS tools to identify their direct reports that needed to complete training.

Results/Findings: There was improvement across all overdue metrics from 2020 to 2021. The average annual improvement was significant, but we wanted better. Consequently, a new strategy was implemented in January 2022 in which the weekly overdue report – previously disseminated from directors to supervisors – was submitted directly to all supervisors who had employees with overdue training. Each supervisor received a report showing how they compared to other supervisors across the organization. Since the initial publication to supervisors, we have seen consistent improvement in all metrics.

Improvement in Overdue Compliance
Metrics	2020 - 2021	2020 – Mar 2022
Total items overdue	54%	88%
Number employees overdue	44%	82%
Average days overdue	20%	63%
Employees with 10 or more overdue items	65%	100%
Employees with 5 or more overdue items	60%	98%
Most items overdue for a single employee	37%	80%
Percentage of overdue employees	44%	82%
Severity factor*	54%	93%
* Based on number of overdue employees and average days overdue.

Conclusions: The completion of training promotes adherence to policies and procedures to maintain compliance. Initiating a monitoring system to prompt leadership accountability for staff along with frequent quality indicator metrics has reduced the number and severity of overdue training.

Weekly averages continue to decrease and are currently the lowest seen since the initiative began. A supervisor performance appraisal metric is under consideration.