Training That Nobody Attended
You rolled out a mandatory 2-hour harassment-prevention training for 210 employees. Completion after 60 days is 61%. The LMS shows the lowest completion (34%) among the 70 warehouse employees, who work rotating shifts and have no company email. Front-line supervisors say they were never told the training was mandatory and that releasing people during peak season 'isn't realistic.' Executive leadership signed a memo requiring 100% completion and now wants a report explaining the shortfall. The vendor charges per seat, and you have already paid for all 210.
1. Diagnose why completion is low and propose a corrective plan with a realistic target.
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Diagnosis is structural, not motivational. Warehouse staff have no email (so email reminders never reached them), work rotating shifts (so a single scheduled session misses half of them), and supervisors were not informed (so release time was never granted). The 61% overall figure masks a 34% warehouse rate - the population most at risk of the conduct the training addresses.
Corrective plan: (1) get supervisor buy-in first - a short briefing and a written release-time instruction from the operations director, because supervisors control the schedule; (2) deliver in shift-aligned blocks, including a session at each shift change and a make-up window; (3) use a completion method that does not depend on email - paper sign-in sheets or kiosk-based LMS login; (4) assign a named coordinator per site.
Target: 100% is the executive ask, but set an interim milestone (e.g., 85% within 45 days, 100% within 90) and report against it. A credible staged target beats a missed absolute one.
2. The vendor is already paid for 210 seats and leadership wants 100%. What do you recommend about the seats and the deadline?
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The seats are a sunk cost - do not let them drive the plan. The question is how to reach the remaining ~82 people. Because seats are already purchased, there is no marginal cost to using them, so prioritize getting the 70 warehouse employees through the existing seats rather than buying anything new.
On the deadline: recommend a 90-day extension with a written justification (shift structure, no email, supervisor release). Do not simply report '61%' and stop; report completion by location and shift so leadership sees the real gap. If leadership insists on the original deadline, document the operational constraint in writing so the shortfall is a known, shared decision rather than an HR failure. Offer a compliance-focused fallback: a short in-person briefing for anyone who cannot complete the full module by the deadline, with the full module scheduled later.