Training Matrix Report
This document will give an explanation of how the Training Needs Analysis module in Assure works, including how the Training Matrix Report is colour coded.
Note that a course can be marked as “Optional / Not Required”. In this case, the cell in the report is always displayed with a grey background.
To generate a Training Matrix Report, go to Modules -> People -> Training Needs Analysis. Click Reports then select Training Matrix Report as shown below. Under Training Matrix Report, you can select the field to break down the report by (e.g. Org Unit). Select 'Queue report to download as' then select the required file type for the report.
The Training Matrix Report will then be available to download in the Report Queue, which can be accessed by clicking on the Reports button in the left-hand side menu.
Simple Example
In the simplest example, an employee will be required to complete a particular course. Note that compliance is based on the required by date for the course record, for example, the required by date for this course could be a long time in the future. At the date of writing this document, this course has a renewal date of over 3 months in the future.
In Assure, we could consider this employee to be compliant with respect to this particular course, and this is reflected in the Training Matrix Report, which gives the relevant cell in the grid a green background and displays the required by date in the cell.
The report can also indicate when a particular course is almost due to be completed, so in this case, we have changed the required by date to a date within the next 90 days.
This employee is still compliant, but the report will now indicate that the course will have to be attended soon to maintain compliance, by giving the relevant cell in the grid a yellow colour. Again, the required by date is displayed in the cell.
If the required by date has passed and the course has not yet been completed, the employee is considered non-compliant. We can demonstrate this by changing the required by date to a date in the past. Note that in this example, we have also changed the status to “In Progress”. Compliance is based on the required by date unless the status is “Completed” (in this simple example).
The report now shows the employee as non-compliant for this course, and the relevant cell is given a red colour. Again, the required by date is displayed in the grid.
Once the course has been marked as completed, the employee is compliant with this course regardless of the required by date. For example,
And in the report, the cell is given a green background and displays the required by date.
Note that in each case the required by date is displayed within the cell – not the “completed on” date.
The following diagram explains how the colour coding works and which records would be considered compliant. Note that “required by” is not a mandatory field – the user is not forced to add a required by date for a course. However, if the date is blank and the course is not marked as completed, then the employee is considered non-compliant when preparing the Training Matrix Report.
Courses Which Are Renewed or Updated Periodically
For some occupations, qualifications have to be renewed/updated periodically. In this example, the Training Needs Analysis record will contain two courses.
And the corresponding Training Matrix Report will display this as follows:
Again, the same colour coding rules are applied as before.
At some point, both courses should be completed, and both will be compliant.
Note in this example, that when both courses are marked as complete, the TNA Record is marked as complete also.
The Training Matrix Report will now look like this.
The employee appears to be fully compliant, having completed both courses. However, let us take the example that the employee must complete one or more of these courses again at some point in the future.
For convenience, we have a method for re-entering the course details and creating new training records which will be automatically added to the Training Needs Analysis record.
As shown in the image above, we can select the Replace & Update option. This creates a new training record based on the old record, and we can complete the required by date along with any other details we wish to change.
The existing Training record is removed from the Training Needs analysis record, but it is not deleted from the system. It can be viewed in the Training Records module.
Our example Training Needs Analysis record now looks like this.
As before, the Training Matrix Report uses the same rules to determine compliance and colour coding.
As an alternative, you may wish to keep a record of all courses inside the Training Needs Analysis record, rather than replacing a course record when the course has to be renewed/updated. In order to do this, you would have to manually add the new course to the Training Needs Analysis record, rather than using the Replace & Update functionality.
As a result, you may have a Training Needs Analysis record that appears to contain duplicate courses, as below.
In order to decide whether this employee is compliant or not, Assure uses the last record to be entered for each course when working out compliance. As you can see above, this employee completed Assure Training in November 2022. However, there is a more up-to-date record for this employee for the same course, and this record is used when calculating compliance.
The same rules as before are used to calculate compliance. Because this more up-to-date record is not marked as completed, compliance will depend on which date the report is run in relation to the required by date. In this case, the required by date is 31 January 2023, the course is marked as not started, and we are running the report on 7 October 2022. The course is therefore marked as compliant, as shown below, with the correct required-by date displayed in the cell.