10 Reasons why your business needs an LMS

Firstly what is an LMS?

LMS stands for Learning Management System. In the future employees are asking themselves this question. “How will you upskill me if I choose to work for your company”? Training and development are, therefore, no longer a nice to have luxury, T&D is a necessity! Since measuring the ROI from T&D is difficult, often companies instead invest their money into places that are more tangible to measure like marketing or product development.

Training usually takes the back seat, because it costs too much and is also time-intensive. Training can also be irrelevant. Trainers don’t understand the real needs of the company and come with the pre-packaged courses that they try to overlay onto the company without really understanding their specific business needs. That is where an LMS comes into the picture. For the past 20 years, I have been involved in T&D. Since I discovered the power of a robust LMS, my training has gone to the next level.

In this blog, I will outline the ten reasons why I strongly suggest you seriously look at acquiring an LMS for your training needs.

1. Invest in Your People

The greatest investment you can make is in the development of your people both personally and professionally. Your employees are your first and most important clients. When you invest in their personal development, it communicates, “we value you”! Companies that invest in an LMS, communicate to their employees you matter to us, and we take your T&D serious.

2. Aligns people with the Vision and Values

To build a healthy culture in any organization, the employees need to be aligned with the Vision and the Values. An LMS helps re-enforce the vision and values of the organization by infusing training with specific topics that will highlight essential DNA.

3. Clear Career Path and Engagement

An LMS helps your employees build a clear career path. It allows employees thus to plot where they are and where they want to go with key markers along the journey. Taking responsibility for one’s development motivates employees to reach the next level of their career and leaves the responsibility up to them to get there.

4. Customize Training

One of the latest moves in T&D is for “Organizational Universities”. Business needs to take ownership of their training, thus creating custom solutions to suit their specific training needs. An LMS allows businesses to create their own ‘in-house’ content that speaks their own unique language.

5. Supports the Business Strategy

Like all great HR strategies, an LMS supports the business strategy. An LMS aligns all your people with where you want to take the business and empowers your people to get there. Staying agile and moving into new markets will require that you quickly upskill your talent with the right skills and competencies.

6. Measure Performance

How do you measure engagement and performance? An LMS used correctly can help you as a business measure performance and engagement, leaving promotions and incentives not up to guesswork or hearsay.

7. Attracting, Recruit and Retain Top Talent

Most ‘Top Talent’ want to know how you will up-skill them? Why would I work for you and not for the company down the road? Great T&D goes a long way to attract Top Talent as Top Talent are serious about their’ development and growth.

8. Knowledge and Content Management

Institutional knowledge is often trapped in someone’s head or in a document ‘somewhere’ that no one knows where to find? Or what do you do when the person who ‘knows it all’ leaves the business? Or how do you keep your information up to date? An LMS helps by pooling the wisdom or best practises of each department, and the sharing of valuable information between employees empowers everyone at all levels. Content is stored in the cloud, and everyone knows where to go to get the latest up to date information.

9. Time-Saving & Flipping the Classroom

How much time is spent gathering the staff (like herding cats) and driving or walking to the training venue? Then the site must be set up, and the trainer must be on form to delivery an entertaining performance. I am not saying there is not a place for live training. What I am saying is that by using an LMS, you can flip the classroom. Half the training time and double the time for practical application and collaborative learning time. Time spent in live training should be focused on the practical application; Q&A and teamwork activities.

10. Blended Learning

A single learning approach does not work for all. An LMS helps you mix up the learning approach from Videos, Discussions, Surveys, Readers, Quizzes, Assignments and ILT (Instructor Lead Training). You can be creative as you want and keep your learners engaged.

In Conclusion

Are you struggling to find time to do T&D? Are your methods outdated and information scattered with no means of measuring the results? Take the pain and struggle out of T&D and discover the power of using an effective LMS. The results will surprise you! Contact us should you want help to develop your own LMS system.