Article Highlights
- The problem: Excessive training documentation
- The solution: Fire department training records software
- The benefits of a digital documentation system
The problem: Excessive training documentation
Fire departments undergo a lot of training, and all this training produces a lot of documentation. This can provide a great deal of work, especially when training documentation is done manually – printing and handing out training materials, storing every employee’s records in large binders, and writing daily observation reports (DORs) by hand.
Many fire departments today still use paper-based training programs and store all their employee training documentation in filing cabinets and Excel spreadsheets. But with these manual systems, supervisors can’t easily oversee trainee program completion, keep track of training documents, and make updates or changes to records. Manual systems are time-consuming, inefficient, and expensive. A paper-and-binder process can cost a department thousands of dollars per employee. And since most fire departments are already operating with limited time and resources, they struggle to maintain proper and consistent fire EMT training documentation.
Without an organized system for keeping training records, it's also difficult to ensure accountability across the department and can increase risk to the organization and community if staff are not properly trained. Lost paper documents make it hard to prove trainees effectively completed all required training, posing a compliance risk. Similarly, under-trained staff leads to mistakes and complacency when providing life-saving services, which put citizens at stake and threaten the department’s reputation if there is a liability issue.
The solution: Fire department training records software
PowerReady by PowerDMS simplifies employee training documentation and tracking by automating processes and streamlining communications in a centralized system. Departments can manage and track fire department documents for probationary training programs in a single, cloud-based location, and access them from any digital device from any location, 24/7. Furthermore, important materials can be uploaded to PowerReady and viewed on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. This ensures trainees can keep up with tasks and deadlines, trainers can log calls and objectives into reports more efficiently, and supervisors can track probationary training progress.
Departments can also automate onboarding and advancement training processes to streamline training management and save time. Easily communicate with trainees and new hires by assigning tasks to individuals, groups, or departments and setting task notification reminders when a deadline is approaching. PowerReady also allows you to create customized workflows based on your specific fire EMT training goals, with the ability to set standardized measurements for success.
In addition, PowerReady's easy-to-use interface lets supervisors track trainee progress and analyze your fire EMT training and advancement training programs. View trainee progress, trainer effectiveness, and areas that need attention in dashboards and reports. Administrators can stay aware of training needs with alerts about low-performing reports and other items that require review. And to top it off, supervisors can save time and frustration by quickly pulling all training records directly from the system to show which staff completed each required training for audits and compliance needs.
The benefits of a digital documentation system
When managing the excessive documentation required for fire-service EMT training, fire departments can experience immense benefits by leveraging fire department training records software. The system saves time on documentation and training management for your supervisors and trainers. Streamlined communication with trainees about upcoming deadlines keeps them on track with their training tasks, and enables leadership to easily find and review DORs and evaluations. This also reduces the printing costs that come with paper-based processes.
PowerReady’s automated training processes also makes training and documentation workflows more efficient, without requiring additional effort from staff. Plus, dashboards and filtering features for targeted data and reports greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for leadership to monitor and compile important training information about staff. This helps uphold accountability and compliance across your entire department to provide excellent services by ensuring they meet training requirements. And ultimately, you can mitigate risk and protect your fire department by effectively tracking and managing all training documentation and completion in PowerReady’s centralized system.
Learn more
PowerDMS' fire department training records software helps trainers and supervisors more effectively manage training documentation to save time and hassle. Learn more by requesting a free demo of PowerReady on our website.