How Do I Report Employee Training Under the VSME Standard?

Why employee training matters in your ESG report

Employee training is part of the social metrics in the VSME Standard because it reflects something investors, customers, and partners increasingly want to see: whether a company genuinely invests in developing its people, not just how it manages emissions or waste.

It is worth being clear about the intent here. This disclosure is not designed to create an administrative burden for small and medium-sized businesses. It is meant to give a simple, honest picture of how much structured learning your employees receive over a year. If your company already runs onboarding sessions, sends people on courses, or holds internal workshops, you are likely already doing more than you think, so the task is mostly about capturing what is already happening.

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What the VSME Standard requires

Under VSME, companies report the average annual training hours per employee, broken down by gender.

In practice, this means:

• Adding up the total training hours delivered across the year
• Dividing by the number of employees, or full-time equivalents, depending on your methodology
• Reporting this average separately for male and female employees

That is the core of it. There is no requirement to list every course by name or justify each session in detail. The disclosure is a workforce-level average, similar in spirit to how the gender pay gap is reported as an organisation-wide figure rather than a line-by-line breakdown.

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Training is defined more broadly than most companies assume

This is the part of the disclosure that trips up the most companies, so it is worth spending time on.

Many businesses assume training only means formal, classroom-style courses, such as something with a syllabus, an instructor, and a certificate at the end. Under the VSME approach, employee training should be interpreted much more broadly than that.

Structured learning activities that generally count as training include:

• Internal workshops
• External courses
• Conferences
• Webinars
• E-learning modules
• Professional certifications
• Safety training
• ESG training
• Product training
• Software training
• Leadership training
• Compliance training
• Onboarding programmes
• Lunch & Learn sessions
• Knowledge-sharing sessions
• Internal presentations
• Structured mentoring
• Skills development sessions

If your company runs any of these, even informally or without a dedicated training budget, it counts toward your employee training reporting. Many SMEs underreport this metric simply because they do not recognise their existing activities as training in the first place.

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What should and should not be counted

The general test is whether there was a deliberate learning activity, meaning something planned with the specific purpose of building a skill or knowledge.

Generally counts as training:

• A new employee's structured onboarding programme
• A team attending an external conference or webinar
• A manager running an internal workshop on a specific skill
• An employee completing an e-learning module or certification
• A scheduled mentoring session with a defined learning goal

Generally does not count:

• Regular daily work tasks
• Informal conversations between colleagues
• Unstructured experience gained simply by doing the job over time

The distinction is not about formality or cost, so a free, one-hour internal workshop counts just as much as an expensive external course, as long as it was a planned learning activity rather than day-to-day work.

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How should companies collect this data?

You do not need a dedicated learning management system to report this properly. Most SMEs can piece the data together from sources they already have, including:

• HR systems
• Learning management systems, if you use one
• Excel spreadsheets or training registers
• Internal records of workshops or onboarding sessions
• Department managers, who often know informally what training their team has attended
• Employee questionnaires, where no central record exists and you need employees to self-report their training hours

The key point is this: you do not need perfect data to report employee training. A consistent, documented methodology, even one built from a mix of manager input and rough estimates, is generally far more useful than leaving the disclosure out altogether because your records are not complete. If you are missing data for part of the year or part of the workforce, note the gap and your assumptions, and aim to close it in future reporting periods.

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How Wardn helps

Wardn gives companies a structured place to record employee training hours as part of their ESG report, rather than trying to reconstruct the year's activity from scattered notes and spreadsheets at reporting time.

In practice, this means you can:

• Record employee training hours as they happen, or in a batch at reporting time
• Maintain a consistent methodology from one reporting period to the next
• Keep documentation year after year, so assumptions and data sources are easy to trace
• Include the resulting average training hours per employee, broken down by gender, directly in your ESG report

This keeps the process manageable, even for companies that do not have a formal training department, by giving structure to data that might otherwise live in a manager's memory or a half-updated spreadsheet.

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Frequently asked questions

What counts as employee training under the VSME Standard?

Training under VSME is interpreted broadly. It includes formal courses and certifications, but also internal workshops, webinars, e-learning, onboarding programmes, safety and compliance training, Lunch & Learn sessions, and structured mentoring. Essentially, it covers any deliberate, planned learning activity.

How do I calculate average training hours per employee?

Add up the total training hours delivered across the reporting year, then divide by the number of employees. VSME asks for this average to be reported separately for male and female employees.

Does informal on-the-job learning count as training?

No. Regular daily work, informal conversations, and unstructured experience gained simply by doing the job are generally not counted as training. The key test is whether the activity was a deliberate, structured learning activity.

What if my company does not have a formal training record system?

That is common, especially for smaller companies. You can gather the data from department managers, existing spreadsheets, or a short employee questionnaire asking staff to report the training they participated in during the year. A consistent, documented approach is preferable to leaving the disclosure out.

Do very small onboarding or workshop sessions count toward training hours?

Yes. There is no minimum cost or formality threshold, so a short, planned internal workshop or onboarding session counts the same way a paid external course does, as long as it was a deliberate learning activity rather than routine work.

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