Driving Employee Development: The Role of an LMS in Corporate Training Programs

Employee development is the cornerstone of organizational growth. It is the process of strategically encouraging and enabling employees to learn new skills and competencies that contribute to the enterprise’s achievement of goals. It is here that Learning Management Systems (LMS) come in handy for an enterprise aiming at upskilling the workforce and enabling continuous learning.

An LMS provides a unified, aggregated platform for employees to access virtual training content. They empower the organization with a centralized tool to launch employee development initiatives and performance evaluation programs. There are several aspects of learning management systems that enable organizations to drive growth. Let’s explore how.

What is Employee Development?

Employee development is the process that organizations undertake, in collaboration with their workforce, to facilitate upskilling, reskilling, or other types of professional learning that help both the company and the individuals progress in their careers and achieve goals.

Why is Employee Development Important?

Providing employees with corporate training programs, on-demand learning, and other options for career growth is extremely important for an organization for several reasons.

1. Employees Value Progress
   Over 20% of employees highlighted that they would like jobs that offer skills training and development. However, not many organizations have employee development as their top priority.
2. Organizations Value Retention
   Employee attrition and churn are major costs to a company that can be reduced by providing employee development programs. These initiatives help employees learn new skills and make the most of their time and work with a company.
3. It Enhances Productivity
   Learning new skills or improving the existing ones is a great boost to employee productivity. It helps bolster their confidence and apply their skills to the work they do.

The Role of an LMS in Corporate Training Programs

Learning Management Systems consolidate all employee development activities onto one platform, making the delivery of these initiatives more streamlined.

1.Benefits of On-Demand Learning Through LMS

• An LMS provides employees with bite-sized learning modules that they can go through at their convenience, giving them flexibility while learning.
• Since these platforms are digital, they house a wide selection of learning materials and resources for the employees.
• The employees can self-pace their learning and create customizable learning paths to their benefit.

2.Tracking Progress and Performance Management

• LMS platforms provide dashboards to employers that help with real-time monitoring of employee development activities.
• Centralized consoles and consolidated progress views make performance evaluation and tracking employees’ progress effortless
• LMS platforms also provide reporting functions that help organizations see the skill gaps. This helps identify targeted training interventions required.

3.Upskilling the Workforce with an LMS

• Employers can deploy training in a variety of formats, such as online or live courses, offline courses, recorded courses, or webinars.
• These platforms provide holistic skill views, helping with planning succession and career progression of employees.

Key Features and Functionalities of an LMS for Employee Development

An LMS sports three key features and functionalities that make them indispensable for employee development:

1.Content Management and Delivery

• An LMS creates a centralized digital repository for all the training and development content, resources, and materials.
• Organizations can use multiple content formats like interactive modules, etc.
• An LMS helps employers provide personalization, self-pacing, and tailored learning options to employees.

2.Learning Analytics and Reporting

• LMS systems come equipped with AI and associated features that help analyze employee progress, performance, and module completion rate. Employers can also measure employee engagement levels while learning.
• Employee management and HR teams get access to employee performance reports and insights.
• An LMS helps employers re-tailor or tweak their training modules depending on skill gaps and other data inferred from current training.

3.Collaboration and Social Learning

• An LMS provides a platform for learning employees to engage in healthy competition, facilitating peer-to-peer learning.
• It facilitates knowledge sharing through interactive features like chats, forums, and online classrooms.
• The gamification properties in an LMS help to boost employee engagement in learning.

Benefits of On-Demand Learning

On-demand learning can help employees dictate their terms of learning.

• What is On-Demand Learning?: On-demand learning can help employees dictate their terms of learning.
• Flexibility and Convenience: On-demand learning enables employees to learn flexibly and at their own convenience, using any format they prefer videos, interactive modules, etc.
• Access to Resources: On-demand learning puts the entirety of learning resources and material within convenient reach of the employees.
• Customizability: With on-demand learning, employees can create customizable learning paths that resonate with their capacities, helping them self-pace their learning.

Tracking Progress and Performance

By tracking employee progress, organizations can truly gauge whether or not the training modules prescribed are effective. Learning Management Systems provide tools and features that allow companies to evaluate the training progress of individual employees as well as team performance. An LMS also has assessment tools that accelerate the process of performance feedback for the employees.

The best feature yet is the analytical capabilities of an LMS that provide insight into employee performance. By way of measuring the time taken to complete a module, the score, the level of engagement, and other metrics, companies get a good idea of how they can design an engaging training module.

Upskilling the Workforce

According to a LinkedIn report, employee upskilling has been recognized as the #2 priority in 2023 after the alignment of learning programs to business goals. This is because jobs today require expanded skills by about 25% as compared to 2015.In this scenario, an LMS can help deliver targeted learning and training programs to employees in a variety of job roles. These modules can be customized to the preference of the learners, depending on individual and job needs.

Furthermore, several LMSs have the provision to reward certificates and credentials to employees after each learning success, helping boost engagement and participation in upskilling.

Case Studies and Examples

Gyrus, a cutting-edge learning management system, is helping enterprises across a plethora of industries streamline their employee development initiatives. The toolset has enabled clients to improve their L&D outcomes exponentially.

1.Bizjet
A leading name in the corporate aviation niche, Bizjet was experiencing setbacks in its L&D initiatives.

• Problem

Employees had very little time to complete the requisite training.
The multitude of regulatory training created difficulty in selecting courses.

• Solution

GyrusAim implemented Individual Development Programs, which mapped the requisite training to the individual employees according to their job and division/departments. As soon as training was ascribed to a division/department, all the associated employees got a notification.

• Outcome

Gyrus’s solution was able to significantly reduce the time required to complete training and increase employee engagement in the LMS.

2.Louisiana Machinery
Louisiana Machinery, a dealer of Cat Engine Power across various utility verticals, faced L&D issues with updating their skills development concept and methodology.

• Problem

Cat updated their L&D guide (applicable to all dealers, including Louisiana Machinery) from course-based training to skills-based employee development. In doing so, the legacy L&D initiatives at LM faced a setback.

• Solution

GyrusAim helped Louisiana Machinery to apply targeted and mapped training modules to the ground forces with ease. The tool was able to deliver information like the progress of individual technicians through training and reports on their performance.It also provided management tools to help retain legacy information pertaining to older training modules and map it to the latest skills training guidelines efficiently.

• Outcome

GyrusAim was able to significantly reduce employee “downtime” while training by applying the concept of Blended Learning. It helped enhance the quality of learning from the modified training modules.

There are several capable LMSs available in the market today:

1.Gyrus
Gyrus LMS provides businesses with future-ready modules and cutting-edge features:

• Intuitive features backed by AI.
• 100% cloud-based deployment.
• Complete scalability.
• Wide options for integration.
• Analytics and reporting features.
• Integration of social networks.

2.Moodle
Moodle is an open-source learning platform. It has several interesting features, like:

• Creation of different learning platforms for every department at the company.
• Easy integrations with ERPs.
• Creation of employee learning journeys.
• Task automation options.

3.Canvas LMS

• Simplified creation of courses.
• Targeted feedback loops.
• Streamlined on-boarding.
• Integration with existing training tools.
• Analytics.

Best Practices for Implementing an LMS in Employee Development

An LMS, like all other digital solutions, is a technology that needs proper implementation and consideration to work optimally. Listed below are some best practices that help organizations make the best of their LMS:

1.Needs Assessment and Goal Alignment
Employee training should be designed to address organizational skill gaps. It is imperative first to identify the objectives of the training and to map these objectives to company goals. It involves assessing the current skill levels of the employees and tailoring the features/functions of the LMS to fill the performance gaps identified.

2.User-Friendly Interface and Intuitive Design
The LMS interface needs to be easy for the employees to use and navigate. It is important to ensure compatibility of the LMS with a variety of operating systems and devices to facilitate seamless adoption and proactive learning.

3.Integration with Existing HR Systems and Technologies
Integrating the LMS with existing systems, such as talent management or HRIS systems, helps companies streamline the data flow and establish a single source of truth. The reporting processes become more efficient with automation.

Challenges and Considerations

With the right approach and assistance, the following challenges can be navigated smoothly:

• The primary challenge is implementing the LMS for employee development. In addition to acquiring the right technology, enterprises require expert implementation partners to smoothen out technological roadblocks.
• The second challenge arises in the form of accessibility issues. The implemented modules need to be tested for deployment across all operating systems. These should be upgraded to the latest configurations before implementation.
• The most challenging aspect to overcome is the natural human resistance to change. Using new tools and technologies to achieve better outcomes may require prior preparation through employee meetings, updates, and early announcements of the change.

Conclusion

Learning management systems can prove to be a beneficial asset in employee development initiatives.By providing centralized digital repositories for learning materials, personalized learning journeys for employees, analytics and monitoring tools for progress tracking, and reporting features, enterprises can take informed decisions on their L&D initiatives.

An LMS is the key to boosting not just employee engagement in learning but productivity as well. The improved methodologies of learning (like interactivity and gamification) help improve the recall and memory retention capacity of the employees. It enables them to apply the concepts to their work more readily. GyrusAim is an LMS equipped with every learning solution an enterprise could need, including cloud-based deployments and high scalability. For more information, you can schedule a demo here.