When it comes to training employees, onboarding and continual learning programs are the seeds that grow forests of productivity. Companies have spent decades trying to engineer their own learning & development techniques… with varying degrees of success.
A great education system isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have – 94% of respondents to a LinkedIn Learning Report would stay with a company longer if they invested in staff development such as career coaching, training, and education opportunities. Inadequate employee training itself accounts for 40% of resignations.
There have been all sorts of methods developed for teaching workers what they need to know for their jobs, including VHS/DVD training videos, worksheets, and even in-person classes. As we advance deeper into the digital age, however, the education process has become much more centralized through something called Learning Management Systems.
Learning Management Systems, or LMS’s, hold collections of educational material that teach information about countless different jobs and sectors. Whether your onboarding employees need to learn more about sales strategies, financial tips, or OSHA rules, a good LMS will be flexible enough to cover almost any learning goal.
Your LMS’ educational chapters will generally come in three formats: video, textbook-style writing, and interactive lessons. At its core, an LMS aims to thoroughly improve the old method of teaching employees skills without diverting too far from what works. They don’t even have to be new hires – there’s always new information/perspectives for your current team to learn.
Even if you already have teaching materials for your staff, investing in an LMS is a great way to update your company’s content and increase your workers’ productivity.
Here are some of the many benefits to using one:
Keeping Your Staff Engaged and Productive
Not only will a good Learning Management System teach employees new quantifiable skills, but it will also promote productivity and engagement.
Many companies make the mistake of committing to archaic training lessons with the idea being, “at least it’s something”. The difference between having outdated educational material and a finely tuned LMS, though, is actually quite large. Gallup found that 54% of employees don’t feel engaged in their workplaces, which means businesses can’t be complacent – they’re fighting a losing battle.
LMS’s turn that around. A worker will be more interested in a brand new LMS that brings them fresh information with a learning experience they can customize. The system can update with new videos and lessons that not only teach your staff the newest possible skills, but prioritize their personal career development.
A good System is built to engage; with a dynamic combination of videos, writing, and interactive lessons, the program naturally draws you in to learn more, just like a great professor. They’re engineered by experts in their field to make you an expert in your field.
Your team will recognize and appreciate the investment you put in them. Give them the best possible training to both arm them with skills and keep them engaged for the long run.
They Work For Companies of All Sizes
A great teacher can teach a classroom of 300 as effectively as a classroom of 3, but the same can’t always be said for old training methods. In the past, only large corporations could realistically afford learning & development programs; small-to-medium businesses just didn’t have the time to hire experts or to organize classes to promote education.
LMS’ change that by being dynamically priced for team size, often charging per employee. This means that if a leader wants to adopt a learning system for their crew of eight, it makes just as much sense as a larger organization using one for their whole company. With its customizability and affordability, no LMS is too big or too small for any team.
This is the true reason LMS’ are the future of learning and development – they offer the exact same help to both local businesses and Fortune 500 corporations.
Flexibility and Accessibility
We’ve all sat down at work and watched training videos created in the 90’s, serving as time capsules for what was prioritized decades ago. Outdated information can not only be a waste of time for your staff, but can confuse them when contrasted with what they’re told in the present day.
Since LMS’s are now internet and cloud based, they can – and will – be updated consistently as time passes. Whether workplace programs receive new features, regulations in your industry change, or new business strategies are developed, educational materials can be modified and created at any time.
Knowing the newest changes to your industry is a guaranteed way to stay at the forefront of your field, just like a System that notifies its users when content is updated with these changes is a guaranteed way to keep your employees up to date.
LMS’s aren’t just flexible in their content, but the way it’s absorbed. The newfound popularity of hybrid workforces has often resulted in complications with educating employees, with stark differences arising between the education of remote workers vs on-site ones. LMS’s offer the solution! You can take interactive lessons, compliance programs, and watch training videos from home just as you would at work.
In the past, companies didn’t often believe their training packages were comprehensive enough for the whole experience to be adequate remotely. With the flexible programming that an LMS offers, however, that worry has been quelled.
Learning Efficiently
There’s a balance you should consider when onboarding new staff: Should you sit them down for a week and teach them everything there is, or should you give them a quick overview and get them straight to work?
It’s tough to train employees at a high speed without leaving anything out… unless you’re using an LMS. Everything a worker needs to learn is sorted accurately and taught thoroughly. The training process no longer becomes a hassle for management, instead, it’s simply up to the employee to complete the task.
Thanks to the capability to track their progress through the curriculum, you don’t have to hawk over their progress. Once a video is watched or a test is taken, you’ll be able to see it in reporting on your end of the site. After onboarding a high number of workers, you might even be able to see trends when it comes to what quizzes they struggle on, and you can infer what needs further teaching. Sit back, sip your coffee and let the System do your job for you.
Since LMS’s are modular, you could also change up what lessons are taken from employee to employee. Perhaps you’ve hired someone with five years of Hubspot experience on their resume; you could have them skip the Hubspot lesson to save a bit of time.
Compliance and Certification
We know, compliance and certification aren’t the most exciting parts of onboarding new talent. Learning OSHA protocol, reviewing food safety, and taking courses on sexual harassment are all points of progress that are deemed essential at most workplaces and should be taken seriously. An LMS helps make this process much quicker and more thorough.
Without online systems, it can be a hassle to ensure everyone’s on the same page when it comes to their progress and which employee has taken which training. Letting an employee slip through onboarding without being OSHA certified isn’t just a minor accident, it’s a red alert hazard.
Learning Management Systems solve every aspect of this problem. First, search your LMS to find the courses they carry that are relevant to your company. Universal ones like Sexual Harassment Awareness should be easy to locate, as should courses on safety regulations. If your company has required learning objectives that are a little more specific to your industry, you can make or import your own right into the system.
Once you’re satisfied with your set of courses, you can assign certificates and benchmarks to the ones that are required to proceed. If you want to get creative and attach a different certificate to every course to recognize their efforts, you’re free to – just make sure to differentiate the courses that are recommended and those that are legally required.
I apologize for just sharing “pros” – if there were any “cons” I’d let you know. LMS’s are simply a great solution for onboarding new staff and reinforcing the skills of current staff. Whether you’ve got new employees that need skills and compliance training or veteran workers that crave a more robust skillset, an LMS will help you get there. Educate your team, keep them engaged, and give your company a competitive edge.
The question now becomes: where will I look for a great, cost effective LMS for my team? The answer has become: HelloTeam!
HelloTeam’s LMS is robust enough to serve large corporations and customizable enough to fit small in-house teams. We’ve got everything you need in a great LMS, including video lessons, interactive quizzes, and documents of all kinds.
Do the impossible by sending your employees through compliance training WHILE keeping them engaged. Turn your onboarding process into one that boosts retention – organizations with engaging onboarding programs retained 91% of their new hires through their first year, representing a 24% jump.
No matter how large or small your organization may be, HelloTeam Learning offers a customizable and comprehensive solution for your training and development needs. Using our platform, you can create custom courses to fit the specific needs of your organization, as well as host existing content. In addition, you have the option to enhance your training offerings by adding on our award-winning professional development and compliance catalog, which includes over 500 courses covering a wide range of topics, including cybersecurity, sexual harassment prevention, and professional skills development.
With HelloTeam Learning, you can take control of your employee training and development, ensuring that your team has the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their roles.