What is the most time consuming part of running a L&D department for YOU?

For us it is creating tutorial videos, localizing them in three different languages, and then uploading them to Docebo. Fortunately, our user management workload is pretty light right now.

@Daniel What software do you use for tutorial vids? 

@tommyVan We use Camtasia. 

For me, it is also content creation / refreshing.

and a big +1 for Camtasia 

For us the biggest drain on us is managing compliance/mandatory training.  It was great when all we did was create rich learning for those who wanted it, but it the org we work for has slowly over the years wanted to introduce more and more mandatory training.  It feels all we do of late is constantly deal with users who are moaning about having to do it, checking why it isn't showing as complete (when they haven't done it properly), or creating reports for departments to show completion rates.

Docebo has helped us with things like team view, refresher training and learning plans but its still doesn't do enough to take the administrative burden away from us.   We’d love it if the manager reports where better, and we had a better way of pushing out completion stats to managers or key people.

Our projects get broken up into 4 key segments that are customer facing

• targeting the audience
• assessing the state of the content / getting to the future state of content
• settling the team into a development option (and then acting on it)
• agreeing on how the group will monitor the learning campaign (and then acting on the reporting need)

Some folk would bring the 2nd/3rd bullets together but I know they are their own bodies of work and I believe you learn that better when you have an ID shop and you are working in a federated model.

Projects that are not customer-facing are fewer, and I lean on my LMS Coordinator for developing/document best practices. I troll around in the forums becoming an expert in the tool so we can keep our consulting needs nice and low. We also keep a problem list and work them through some lean approaches to get us to a better place. I get a chance to put up ideas and at the right time I even get in contact with product to see if we can move the needle on a problem.

Most of our time is based on a serious mix of targeting/content dev/reporting….but we see the needs hit us in waves as we move projects come through at all different levels and stages.

It is that mix that makes it fun...and makes me wake up to a very different day every day - most of those days are with a smile.

Hope that helps.

You know, I’ve been watching this thread and thinking about it all week, and have had a few answers in my head. Many not dissimilar from those discussed already, many of which I came down to “depends”, because it really depends on the what the expectations of different groups and roles.

However, I am sitting here writing up some articles to share on here (stay tuned, really excited about these), and I think the biggest/time consuming part is all the monitoring/justification of investment. How much time is focused on showing how learning impact is going, or user adoption, or who is missing things, etc. Seems like always a moving target or what the reporting needs to show. Add on to it, that you can make reports say just about anything, I find trying to show true, accurate information that is not just a bunch of correlations to prove pre-thought statements. It’s really a thing that needs to be baked into the design from the beginning and have some dedicated workers doing it, rarely do either of these happen.

I think that is where I currently land.

It’s fascinating how similar and wildly different all of these responses are! All of them resonate with us as well, depending on the week. For example, when I posted this (and in general) the most time-consuming process was course creation outside of Storyline. As soon as we get a SCORM course development request, however, the focus pivots. 

I’ve had weeks where I was generating custom reports to show utilization. Weeks where all I did was technical integrations. Weeks that involved mostly graphic design for pages. Thankfully, @Bfarkas, our model allows for our customers to justify to their board the cost of the LMS, and we rarely have to do more than point them in the right direction of the report they are looking for. 

That is a nice world to be in :)

I am so deeply grateful we only have to produce in one language. All of you that have multiple languages are champions!

I love running the numbers on the in language stuff for us, I know it’s a unique scenario, but every time a new language gets added or a new area is discussed for the existing 6, the usage numbers never come close to supporting the investment and maintenance cost. Sounds good to upper level folks though, which hits a new running issue: right proper thing vs. what management wants :)