Employee Development Tracking Inside Your LMS: Introducing Goals
Employee development gets harder to manage when progress depends on more than completing a single course.
Onboarding a new hire. Closing a skills gap. Building a role-based development track. Managing certification requirements. Each can involve multiple courses, learning paths, requirements, and deadlines.
Without a structured way to bring those pieces together, administrators often end up relying on manual processes or spreadsheets to figure out who’s making progress and who needs attention.
DigitalChalk‘s Goals feature brings those requirements into one trackable plan. Employees know what’s expected. Managers can see who’s on track and who needs help. Administrators get a consolidated view of progress without maintaining a separate tracking process.
The result is simpler employee development tracking, with progress, requirements, and deadlines visible in one place.
Administrators define the learning requirements an employee needs to complete, organize them into a trackable plan, and let DigitalChalk monitor progress automatically.
What Is a Learning Plan in an LMS?
A learning plan brings multiple training and development requirements together around a specific objective.
That could mean completing several courses during onboarding, finishing a role-based learning path, earning required credits, meeting a certification requirement, or completing a combination of learning activities by a certain date.
Instead of giving employees a disconnected list of assignments, a learning plan gives them a clear objective, defined requirements, and visibility into their progress.
In DigitalChalk, Goals provide the structure for that plan.
What Is DigitalChalk Goals?
A Goal defines what an employee needs to accomplish, when it needs to be completed, and what they earn when they finish.
A Goal can include specific courses, learning paths, course elements, documentation, acknowledgments, or even completion of other Goals.
That means administrators can connect multiple learning requirements to a larger objective rather than tracking each assignment separately.
For example, a Goal could support a structured employee onboarding program, a role-based development initiative, a certification requirement, or a multi-course skills program.
Once the Goal is assigned, DigitalChalk automatically tracks progress as employees complete their requirements.
Employees know what’s expected and what’s left. Managers gain visibility into progress. Administrators no longer have to maintain a spreadsheet on the side to figure out who’s actually moving forward.
How to Build a Goal in 5 Steps
Administrators can build a Goal around the specific requirements, timing, and outcomes of a development plan.
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Define — Establish the objective the employee needs to accomplish.
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Schedule — Choose the timeline: a fixed period, annual or fiscal-year cycle, recurring cycle based on assignment date, or no deadline for open-ended development.
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Add Requirements — Select the courses, learning paths, course elements, or other completion criteria that make up the Goal.
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Set Achievements — Choose what’s awarded automatically when the Goal is completed, such as a badge, certificate, or credits.
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Review & Publish — Confirm the Goal and assign it to the appropriate learners.
Once published, employees can see their assigned Goals from their dashboard, including individual requirements, overall progress, applicable dates, and current status.
Statuses include On Track, Needs Attention, At Risk, Overdue, No Deadline, and Complete.
That visibility matters because managers don’t have to wait until a deadline passes to discover someone is behind.
They can see who is on track, who needs attention, and who is at risk, giving them an opportunity to intervene before a development or training requirement becomes overdue.
Managers and administrators also get a consolidated Learner Progress view across employees and Goals. They can filter and export data, send targeted reminders, extend deadlines when appropriate, or complete a Goal administratively when needed.
How Goals Improve Employee Development Tracking
Goals give employees, managers, and administrators visibility into the same development plan without requiring someone to manually keep the pieces connected.
With Goals, organizations can:
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Turn onboarding, development plans, certification requirements, and skills initiatives into structured learning plans instead of scattered assignments
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Give employees one place to see what’s expected, what’s complete, and what’s left
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Let learners register directly for required courses instead of searching the course catalog
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Give managers real-time visibility into who is on track, who needs attention, and who is at risk
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Identify potential gaps before requirements become overdue
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Award certificates, badges, or credits automatically when requirements are complete
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Give administrators reporting that shows what’s actually been completed, not simply what was assigned
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Reduce the manual work required to monitor development across employees and programs
The result is more than better tracking.
Employees get a clearer path forward. Managers know where support is needed. Administrators spend less time reconciling progress across courses and spreadsheets.
See how Goals turns a plan into tracked progress. Request a Demo.
Built to Support Development Plans of Any Size
A Goal can be as straightforward as onboarding one new employee or as comprehensive as managing development requirements across an entire workforce.
For example:
A new hire onboarding Goal can include required courses, a completion deadline, and a badge or certificate confirming the employee has completed the program.
A role-based development Goal can bring together courses and learning paths employees need to complete as they build skills for their current or future role.
A skills initiative can organize multiple learning requirements around a particular team, department, or business priority.
A certification or continuing education Goal can help track required learning, credits, and completion requirements for employees, customers, partners, or association members.
And when learning needs to extend beyond an online course, Goals can work alongside DigitalChalk’s Checklists feature to support more granular, on-the-job task verification.
In every case, the workflow is the same: define the objective, establish the requirements, assign the Goal, and track progress until it’s complete.
From Assigned Training to Measurable Progress
Assigning training is relatively easy. Knowing whether someone is actually progressing toward a larger development objective is harder. That’s the gap Goals is designed to close.
Courses, learning paths, deadlines, achievements, and other requirements can roll up into one trackable plan inside DigitalChalk. Employees know what they need to accomplish. Managers can see who’s on track and who needs attention. Administrators get a consolidated view of progress without maintaining a separate tracking process.
And because Goals is built into the same LMS used to manage and deliver training, the plan and the learning behind it stay connected.
The result isn’t simply more training assigned. It’s better visibility into whether employee development is actually moving forward.
Employee Development Isn’t the Only Use Case
Goals can also support learning programs outside your internal workforce.
For customer and partner training, Goals can bring certification requirements, courses, learning paths, and credits together into a defined program.
For associations and continuing education providers, Goals can help organize CEU or certification requirements and give learners clearer visibility into what they need to complete.
That means the same structured approach used for employee development can extend to customers, partners, members, and other external audiences.
Learn more about how DigitalChalk supports continuing education and association training.
Getting Started with Goals
Goals are available now in DigitalChalk. Current customers can find setup guidance in the admin help documentation or reach out to their dedicated support team.
Not yet a DigitalChalk customer?
See how Goals can turn onboarding, employee development, certification, and other multi-step learning programs into structured, trackable plans.
