Learning budgets

Note: You cannot use learning budgets if you are interfacing with Infor Learning Management.

At the organization level, you decide whether learning budgets are used, not used, or used only for France-based resources.

France-based organizations have reporting requirements that the Development Planning application satisfies through the implementation of learning budgets. So, if you are a France only organization or if you are a multinational organization with operations in France, you should localize your organization for France (and other countries, including the US, if applicable) and use learning budgets either for your entire organization or for only the France-based resources in your organization.

If you do not have France-based resources, you can either always use learning budgets, or never use learning budgets.

Advantages of using learning budgets

The primary advantage of using learning budgets is to allow you to budget your development costs and track your estimated and actual costs against the budgets. These are the advantages of using learning budget:

  • Learning budgets are grouped by development period.
  • You can define multiple development budgets. The budgets can be based on an employee eligibility group and are calculated as a percentage of the total salary base for the qualified resources. Budgets are associated with a currency. If you are a multinational organization, you probably would have a budget for each currency.
  • All resource development activities are tied to a specific budget and development period. Therefore, all your estimated and actual development costs can be tracked and accounted for, including resource-specific costs (such as costs based on a resource's "other rates" or on a resource's professional category learning rate).
  • You can default development activity costs to resource activity development estimated costs and modify the estimated costs as needed.
  • As you add resource development activity requests to a budget, the system displays the amounts you have spent and the budget amount still available to you.
  • You can distribute budgets at the manager level, thus allowing managers to track their requests for development activities against the budgets assigned to them.
  • All resource activity requests, wherever initiated, must be reviewed and approved by the learning manager before a resource can register, thus letting the learning manager control costs.
  • When sessions are completed, learning managers update the actual costs either automatically or manually. For sessions provided under a provider contract, learning managers also have the option of using the contract cost as the actual cost.

Advantages of not using learning budgets

The primary advantage of not using learning budgets is that it greatly simplifies the employee and manager processes. Use this option if you are not required to track budgets or actual costs. These are other advantages of not using learning budgets:

  • Employees can find a development activity in the catalog, request the activity, and the activity is automatically approved. They can register for a session at the same time as they request the activity or register later. Registration in a session is approved automatically if the organization has selected the configuration option to allow automatic approval.
  • Managers and mentors can assign activities directly to resources without having to submit a request to the learning manager.
  • If the activity involves sessions, resources or managers can choose a session at the time that they register or later.
    • If the request is initiated by a manager the session registration is automatically approved. If there is room, the registration is confirmed; otherwise, it may be rejected or wait-listed.
    • If the request is initiated by a resource and the learning organization does not require manager approval of registrations, the session registration is automatically approved. If there is room, the registration is confirmed; otherwise, it may be rejected or wait-listed.
    • If the request is initiated by a resource and the learning organization requires manager approval of registrations, the manager receives the approval request and must approve the session registration. If there is room, the registration is confirmed; otherwise, it may be rejected or wait-listed.
    • You can track participation for the session, but you cannot track session costs.
  • You can track development costs only at the development activity level. The costs can be only flat amounts or amounts entered on the development activity itself. These amounts can be displayed in the catalog. Multiple costs can be totaled and the result displayed in the catalog, provided they have the same currency.
  • The function of the learning manager is basically limited to defining and maintaining development activities, sessions, and the catalog. They can also manage resources' registration on the resource's behalf.

    Learning managers are required to complete the resource's participation in the activity, whether or not sessions are used.