Why is the ‘Learning
Management System’ or an ‘LMS’ a trending buzzword in Learning
& Development (L&D) circles in enterprises worldwide? Has employee
skilling/ training gained its due footing amid KPI targets? This blog will help you answer these questions
and find the key benefits of an LMS in elevating workforce training.
Over the past decade, businesses have
been in a constant flux to gain the desired competitive advantage on the account
of rising complexity and uncertainty within the corporate landscape, and so are
the learning and training challenges that business agility usually calls for. The
present digital, information-based economy has a reduced shelf-life for
knowledge, consequently placing a premium on reskilling /upskilling
to sustain future growth. As a result, the
importance of learning tools and platforms to manage organization wide Learning and Development (L&D) activities is also rising.
An LMS is not only a
web-based application that creates, imparts and manages workforce training, but
also is an integral part of your organization’s L&D best practices. The
primary responsibility of L&D departments is to build a learning strategy
that is based on the company’s business goals. This learning strategy is meant
to support the professional development of employees and build capabilities
across the company. An LMS is the best possible solution to successfully and
uniformly execute this strategy.
Here are eight compelling
reasons you need an LMS:
- Reduces Training Time and Expenses
Skilled employees are necessary for any
business to sustain a balanced growth. Their job performance and satisfaction level
depend a lot on the available opportunities to maintain or enhance their
relevant skills .This requires a well-planned and ongoing investment in L&D.
Successful execution of these L&D initiatives on time and on budget is
critical to garner and sustain support from business leaders. Leveraging an LMS
for this purpose can noticeably reduce the training expenses and time as
compared to other available methods. An LMS helps save the
cost of hiring an instructor, renting a venue, travelling and lodging, printing
the training material and more. The loss of business hours due to in-person
training is greatly reduced by allowing access to online learning any-time,
any-where and from any device.
- Centralizes Knowledge Pool
Businesses drive innovation and growth based on their intellectual
capital. An LMS provides a centralized pool of learning resources that is up-to-date,
consistent and accessible across the company. Such a knowledge repository
provides uniform learning opportunities for the geographically distributed
workforce. An LMS features tools to easily create, upload, assign and appraise
the content of the repository.
Today, the L&D focus has shifted
from providing employee training as a discipline to giving an entire learning
experience in order to drive learner engagement. The Artificial
Intelligence (AI) empowered LMSes of today provide that effectively.
Using the training patterns and course preferences of a learner, it can
identify and recommend best fit training programs out of the centralized
knowledge pool. Enriched learner choice is motivating and engaging for the
workforce and they are more likely to stick to, and flourish with, LMS
supported learning. Augmented employee skills hence attained, are one of
the important factors in increasing job satisfaction, and subsequently, the
bottom line.
An LMS lets you leverage
the power of social learning, where you can include
online forums, live chat, news feed, and more, that will undoubtedly be useful in
learning from and with your peers and colleagues. Social Learning helps
employees develop, support and share significant insights in an informal
set-up. Shared learning can also prove to be an important tool to generate preferred
knowledge resources, obtain learners’ response and use this information to
increase the employee experience.
- Delivers Blended Learning
An LMS gives you the unique
facility of providing employee training in multiple formats like Instructor-led Training (ILT), e-learning (bespoke and online content libraries), video-based
learning, mobile learning, social learning, and virtual classrooms
among others. This functionality provides a variety of learning options ranging
from bite-sized microlearning to hours-long intensive training.
In addition, Blended Learning provides benefits of scaling audiences, economizing
training budgets and expanding the reach.
- Facilitates
Business Intelligence
Learning analytics feature of an LMS
upholds huge significance in improving employees’ learning experience by
capturing and preserving details related to their training. An LMS provides the
ability to easily track their progress and generate performance reports on an
overall or individual basis. L&D can then easily track learning progress,
knowledge gains, improvement areas and more to take further call to action.
- Enables Extended Enterprise Training
With an LMS, businesses can leverage
learning as a strategic tool to drive sales, brand loyalty, and customer
satisfaction especially if a large section of the revenue derives from their
channel partners. The LMS provides relevant and engaging training material,
evaluation and modification of channel partner practices. Better trained and empowered
channel partners can reach their peak performance to enhance business growth.
- Simplifies Compliance Training
An LMS has built-in capability to
automate administrative, deployment and tracking functions which can be
utilized to impart mandatory compliance
training without any overhead of time or workload. This ensures that the
business is running in accordance with the industry regulations. Simplification
of compliance training has played a major role in expanding the LMS industry
worldwide.
These are some of the numerous benefits that businesses worldwide are
deriving by utilizing an LMS. Today, a targeted learning approach is vital in shaping
an individual’s knowledge and skills, which often results in an improved
ownership in their roles. An LMS addresses the necessity of a flexible,
personalized and relevant training platform to bridge the gap between learning
and performance. Modern cloud-based LMSes are equipped with proven-effective functionalities,
including engaging UI/UX, agile training management, efficient data storage, flexibility
of scale, built-in Intelligence, responsive design, useful analytics, mobile
apps, and the list will continue to grow with the speed of innovation in
technology.
However, even with the best learning platforms available, we still
need to identify our current L&D objectives and extrapolate that to the
future requirements to come up with the most suitable option. Now that requires
some serious work.
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