Company leaders, learning and development professionals, and employees all agree that employee training and development is not only beneficial but necessary for preventing organizational skills gaps, retaining talent and remaining competitive. Yet according to Gartner, 70% of employees feel they don’t have the skills they need to do their current jobs effectively, and 64% of managers don’t think their employees are ready for future skills requirements.
One of the best investments you can make to transform your organizational learning strategy and close those gaps is a corporate learning management system (LMS). Here are the top six benefits of having an LMS for your business.
1. Make Learning Flexible
According to LinkedIn Learning’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, the number one challenge to employee learning is finding the time to fit it in. An LMS addresses this head-on by making corporate training and development programs available to your employees anywhere, at any time, on any device.
This flexibility improves access to more learning opportunities on an as-needed basis, so employees don’t have to wait for the next offering that fits into their busy schedule to develop the skills they need to do their jobs effectively.
2. Personalize Employee Learning Experiences
Having an LMS allows you to personalize the learning experience for each employee. Personalized learning is efficient, effective and engaging because it takes into account the knowledge that learners already have and allows them to build from there.
There are several ways an LMS makes it simple to personalize learning. For example, release conditions trigger activities based on how the learner uses the system, such as suggesting additional resources for someone who is struggling or more advanced material for someone who needs a greater challenge. An LMS also makes it easy for instructors to include material in a variety of formats, such as readings, videos, discussions, games, quizzes and more, appealing to a variety of learner preferences.
Personalizing the learning experience using an LMS allows employees to work at their own pace and take charge of their own learning and development.
3. Organize All of Your Learning and Development in One Place
Rather than having multiple resources scattered across systems and services, an LMS lets you organize all your corporate learning in one place. This has multiple benefits:
- a single login simplifies workplace learning, making it easy for learners to find the courses they’re interested in
- no more repeated company-wide emails to remind everyone to complete their mandatory compliance training—you can automate reminders and tracking to reduce the administrative work
- with only one interface to learn, L&D and your learners can become proficient and make better use of all the available features
- all your offerings can have a consistent look and feel that matches your branding
Keeping things simple makes it easier for everyone to engage with your corporate learning programs.
4. Foster Social and Collaborative Learning
According to LinkedIn Learning’s 2021 Workplace Learning Report, employees prefer learning with their peers. In their survey of 2,393 employees, 91% reported being more successful when learning together, and 92% said learning together creates a sense of belonging.
An LMS makes it easy to design social learning experiences even when your employees aren’t together in the same room. Collaborative tools such as discussion boards, learning groups and virtual classrooms give learners a chance to share knowledge and experience, and to benefit from each other’s expertise.
Another benefit of collaborative tools is that employees from different offices and departments can meet and learn from colleagues across the company that they might not have otherwise encountered, which can improve cross-functional communication and collaboration on the job as well.
5. Manage and Secure Learning Data
An LMS gives you access to a plethora of data that you can use to improve your organizational learning strategy. The learning analytics within your LMS can allow you to:
- improve learner engagement and satisfaction
- identify hidden skill sets and high-potential employees within your organization
- ensure your content consistently delivers the desired learning outcomes
- identify and support at-risk learners before they drop a course
- simplify tasks like updating employee training records
- easily gather the information required for reporting purposes
Your LMS can also give you peace of mind about data security and compliance. In our webinar Addressing the Skills Gap, Katy Tynan, principal analyst at Forrester, points out that many companies capture plenty of data but don’t use it for anything meaningful because they struggle with how to use it safely. She goes on to say, “If we could harness the power of all that employee data to make meaningful connections, better business decisions, and a better employee experience, that would be a powerful thing.”
Having the right LMS for your business enables you to use all that rich data safely to make informed, evidence-based decisions about all aspects of your company training and development programs.
6. Reduce Costs
Having a corporate LMS reduces costs like room rentals, transportation, accommodation and meals. But there are also nonmonetary savings, including:
- Flexibility to learn when it’s convenient. No matter where your employees are, an LMS makes training convenient and scalable since you don’t need to add space to accommodate additional learners.
- Personalized learning means your employees aren’t sinking hours into training they don’t need, helping them balance work time with professional development time.
- Increased adoption and engagement associated with simple interfaces and collaborative tools allow learners to get the most benefit from their learning.
- Data analytics reveals insights that can help you reduce onboarding time, close skills gaps and focus on employee career development, helping you improve retention and reduce hiring costs.
Cara Scott, certification program manager at Dematic, shared a great example of the last point above when she told the story of how, by implementing its corporate LMS, D2L Brightspace, they shortened their in-house certification time from 12 months to only eight weeks. This onboarding improvement enables their employees to make an impact in their work much more quickly than before.
Learning at the Speed of Change
An LMS is an important part of a comprehensive organizational learning strategy. The ability to respond to current and emerging skills and competency needs with flexible, personalized and engaging learning experiences is a necessity you can’t afford to ignore.
Want to learn more about creating employee training that will strengthen your organization’s resilience? Download the eBook, Navigating Change: Supporting the Workforce of Tomorrow Through Specialized Employee Training.
Written by:
Karen Karnis has a BA in sociology from the University of Guelph. She has worked in social services, higher education, communications and journalism. Karen is currently working toward a Master of Education in Sustainability, Creativity and Innovation through Cape Breton University.
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