Boost training completion rates with scheduled reminders

It's no secret that training completion rates are often less than desirable. With so many things competing for their attention, employees often struggle to make time for training, or they start it but fail to finish for one reason or another. The resulting gaps in knowledge can lead to decreased productivity and even safety risks in the workplace. When you’re one of a few, or maybe the only person managing your organization’s training, how can you ensure everyone stays on track?  

That's where Smarteru's scheduled reminders feature comes in! With this feature, you can automatically prompt learners to complete their training at a regular cadence. Not only will this boost completion rates, but it will also help keep your learners engaged and motivated throughout the learning process.

What are scheduled reminders? 

Scheduled reminders are automated emails that remind learners when they have online or SCORM courses to complete. These reminders can be set to go out at specific intervals throughout the training process based on each course’s due date. This prompting helps to ensure that learners stay on track and complete their training on time. 

For example, you can easily schedule a reminder to go out to all learners who have not completed their First Aid course five days before the due date. You may also set reminders to go out the day before the course is due and five days after it is overdue. When a learner completes the course, the reminders will automatically stop!

In addition to sending reminders to learners, you can also send them to other people in your organization. For example, you may want to email supervisors the day after one of their supervisee’s assigned courses becomes overdue. Let’s take a closer look at how you can set up scheduled reminders in SmarterU. 

How can you set up scheduled reminders?

Within your account settings, you can turn on and schedule reminders for all online and SCORM courses that have due dates in your account. This allows you to quickly and easily set up all your default reminders in one place. You can then adjust these settings on a course-by-course basis.

To set up your default scheduled reminders, follow these steps: 

1. Navigate to your account settings. 
2. Open the Scheduled Reminders accordion. 
3. Enable scheduled reminders. 

You can manage two types of reminders. Course Due Reminders are sent before an online or SCORM course’s due date. Course Past Due Reminders are sent after the due date has passed. You can add up to five reminders of each type.  

To add a reminder, follow these steps:

1. Click +Reminder. 
2. Specify when you want to send the reminder. In this case, we want to send a reminder five days before the course due date.
3. Determine who should receive the reminder email — learners, supervisors, specific users, and/or custom contacts. 
4. Pick the email template you want to use. 

5. Click Save. 

We also recommend enabling Email Summarization to prevent flooding your learners with emails. When this setting is on, and SmarterU detects that it will send five or more reminders to a learner, it will send them as one email instead. 

As we mentioned earlier, you can override your default reminder settings on a course-by-course basis. Simply view your online or SCORM course settings, open the Schedule Reminders accordion, and enable Override Account Defaults. 

What are the benefits of using scheduled reminders?

The most significant advantage of using this feature is to streamline your training program administration. By setting up automated reminders ahead of time, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to send out important notices or letting deadlines slip by unnoticed. Moreover, scheduled reminders help boost completion rates, ensuring learners start — and finish — their training on time. Better completion rates, in turn, positively impact compliance rates, productivity, performance, and may even prevent a workplace safety incident.

If your organization is looking for an efficient way to streamline its training program administration —and boost completion rates in the process—then give Smarteru’s scheduled reminders a try!

Questions? Contact us at support@smarteru.com.