Options for Managerial Oversight

To grant a user administrative or managerial oversight of learners or employees, Portal Administrators can choose between two different types of reporting relationships between LMS users: a Position Code Hierarchy or a direct Person-to-Person structure. Before committing to one of these options, it’s important to understand how you want your organization to oversee training and report on training activities.

LatitudeLearning® uses Position Hierarchy as the default reporting structure for new portals. Even Portal Administrators who select Person-to-Person for user and training management oversight must still have a sound LMS Position Hierarchy in order to generate Training Progress Reports, assign Certifications and Curriculums (via Position Groups), and approve new account Self Registrations.

Position-based Hierarchy Reporting

Position Code reporting, uses position codes arranged in a hierarchy to establish Superior/Subordinate relationships that determine manager/student oversight. These relationships enable users with superior positions (managers) to view training, approve course enrollment requests, and set and manage training goals for subordinate users (students) within their organization. 

Every position in the hierarchy should have at least one superior position relationship except the top position, which should be reserved for the training portal administrators. This allows portal administrators to see, manage, and report on training for all employees, even top executives. Gaps in the position hierarchy create “orphaned” users who report to no one and therefore are not visible in managerial views like My Team or in User Search.

When considering the use of Position-based managerial reporting, keep in mind:

• Positions can, but are not required to represent the job titles of your organization.
• Not all managerial relationships are concerned with employee training management. When users have a number of direct and dotted-line managers, consider building the hierarchy in the LMS that pertains to just those superiors who are relevant to the training aspect of employee management. Consider which superior position would be the one to:
  • approve a subordinate position’s enrollments, if necessary
  • assign training to the employee
  • get notified of subordinates’ training activities
  • view employee training history via LMS reporting
• Having a position hierarchy that is too complex with extensive numbers of superiors and/or subordinates per position can have an adverse impact on system performance. It is acceptable to have more than one superior position, but it should be restricted to those relationships that make sense from the perspective of employee training oversight.
• In addition to avoiding gaps in the hierarchy, also avoid circular references (e.g. managers who oversee people who may also be referenced as the manager’s manager.) This can put LMS processes into unending loops and affect system response times.
  

This reporting style is best used when the reporting structure designates specific subordinate positions that report to a specific superior position consistently throughout the organization and “named” managers aren’t as critical to managing training for their users. It may also support smaller organizations in which managerial relationships are not as complex across the organization.

Person-to-Person Hierarchy Reporting

Person-to-Person (P2P) reporting enables Portal Administrators to set up reporting relationships based on Username, rather than Position codes. With Person-to-Person reporting, a user may have zero, one, or multiple managers, similar to the way many organizations are structured today. These relationships also enable managers to view training, approve course enrollments, and enroll others in courses in the same way they can with Position Code Reporting. Managerial assignments in P2P reporting are established at the profile level, so it is possible to have different managers across multiple user profiles. It is also possible for managers with people across locations have visibility into their direct and indirect reports without requiring a profile at each of those locations.

It is important to understand that enabling Person-to-Person functionality will instantly change your LMS end user experience. The Managerial Hierarchy will drive data found under the manager’s My Team page or Employees and Approvals tabs. It will also scope the list of users a manager can see in Enroll Others and progress-tracking features.

Because enabling P2P reporting is a single setting on the LMS Information configuration page, a portal administrator can toggle between both reporting structures as necessary with no impact to user account or profile data. A user’s Position and/or Manager assignments for both reporting hierarchies are maintained in the database.

Once Person-to-Person is enabled, Portal Administrators must build a direct reporting structure between LMS users for administrative or managerial oversight. The User Import can help update existing employee records to include direct manager assignments. Each user profile can be assigned in different ways:

• One manager – When a user has one manager, the profile relationship is flagged as “Direct Manager”.

• Multiple managers – Administrators can assign users a Direct Manager with additional Alternate Managers as necessary. At this time the “Direct Manager” flag is purely informational, as Direct and Alternate managers have the same scope of user oversight.

• No managers – Manager assignment is not required, which means there may be some users at the of the P2P hierarchy who are unmanaged by a specific individual. They are always visible to portal administrators, at a minimum.

Person-to-person reporting is best suited for use in the newer responsive LMS User Interface, not the Classic interface. Classic Reports do not support P2P relationships, but Report Writer does.

Learn more about setting up a Position Hierarchy and/or Person-to-Person structure in the Related Links section on this page.