Overview
Most training records answer the wrong question. They can tell you who attended what, which is the question the budget asks, and they cannot tell you what anyone is now able to do, which is the question the work asks. So the training file grows every year and the staffing decision is still made from memory.
Nama’s training area is built so a course ends by changing something on the employee’s record.
Four steps, in the order a course actually lives
- The course is a catalogue entry — a reusable definition of what is taught, independent of who takes it or when.
- The plan turns the catalogue into a schedule: which employees need which skills, and which courses will get them there. This is where training stops being a series of one-off requests and becomes a programme with a shape.
- Enrolment records the delivery — who was actually registered, with which instructor, on which dates.
- Ending the course closes out one employee’s participation and records the skill level they reached.
That last step is the one that matters. The same skill vocabulary is used by the recruitment side, where a vacancy profile names the skills a role needs and the level required for each. So a course that raises someone from good to very good in a named skill has changed the answer to a question the company will ask later, when it is looking for someone to fill a role rather than someone to send on a course.
Rating the training, not just the trainee
When a course wraps up, the same scored-criteria mechanism used for staff appraisal can be pointed at three different subjects: the course itself, the student who took it, or the instructor who delivered it — and the instructor may be an employee or an outside provider. Each criterion carries its own weight for each of those angles, and a raw score turns into a qualitative finding through the ranges set on the criterion.
That is how a training budget becomes reviewable. A course everybody rates poorly stops being repeated, an external provider that scores badly twice is not booked a third time, and the plan for next year is built on evidence rather than on last year’s plan.
What it costs, and to whom
Because training runs on the same employee record as everything else, its cost is attributable — per employee, per department, per course — instead of arriving once a year as a single line in a budget review. The department that keeps sending people is visible, and so is the one that never does.
Courses, plans, enrolment and course completion with skill levels are documented in the training section.
