What does it take to transform your staff from capable professionals to experts?
In a time of high employee turnover, enabling employees to expand their skill sets is imperative.
Employees are no longer simply looking for a paycheck — they want a work culture that values their personal growth as much as it does business growth.
LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report reveals that a desire for greater professional growth and learning opportunities is a major factor driving employees to seek new jobs. Moreover, offering new learning opportunities is the number one way companies are working to improve employee retention.
For many companies, LMS platforms offer a simple solution for this problem — or so it may seem.
Finding the right LMS platform for your company — and, thereby, boosting retention — comes down to knowing what to prioritize when it comes to employee enablement and learning.
What is an LMS platform?
An LMS (learning management system) platform is a key technology that enables workplace learning.
With the right LMS platform, a business leader can more easily construct curriculums, schedule lessons, and share knowledge across the entire business. Additionally, most LMS platforms offer essential capabilities for tracking and analyzing employee progress and performance as well.
One important consideration for LMS platforms is that not all provide learning content features.
Many LMS platforms are designed to simplify the process of learning and development (L&D) in the workplace, rather than to assist in the creation of the actual learning content. As a result, not all LMS platforms offer the same features and functionalities.
3 key factors to look for in an LMS platform
Not all LMS platforms are built the same and, thus, not all can provide the features you want and need.
Before setting out on your journey to adopt and implement an LMS platform, the first step is to outline which objectives you hope to achieve and which specific types of support you want from your platform.
Ideally, you should seek a comprehensive LMS platform that covers all of your bases — from onboarding and initial training to building internal relationships and automating essential tasks.
With this in mind, let’s examine the three factors that make an LMS platform a worthwhile investment:
1. Blended learning
A lack of personalization is where many companies go wrong with continued learning in the workplace.
No two employees are the same and every employee has their own unique style of learning. As a result, when business leaders try to implement a one-size-fits-all learning solution, it can end up falling flat with a significant portion of the company’s employees.
Blended learning is a style of continued learning that enables employees to choose the learning pathways that work best for them. Some may prefer a more hands-on, peer-to-peer approach, while others may desire a self-led learning experience.
Here are just a few examples of how an LMS platform can facilitate blended learning:
- Mentorship Matching: For employees that prefer a more interpersonal approach to workplace L&D, a mentorship program pairing them with a more experienced employee can be a great way to build internal relationships that foster better learning and professional growth. Look for an LMS platform that offers features for helping you identify and pair the best mentors and mentees.
- Expert Analyses: Along with the ability to identify potential mentors, it is crucial to have platform features that allow you to identify specific experts on a particular topic. Whether you are planning on pre-recording lessons to share with employees or teaching lessons in person (or, ideally, a combination of the two) knowing who your experts are and which of them are open to taking on an instructional role is vital.
- Codified Knowledge: When workplace learning is occurring in a multitude of ways (online, in-person, instructor-led, self-led, etc.) having a strong and unified knowledge base is key. Codified knowledge provides business leaders with easy access to all of a company’s shared information, including the various educational resources used. This knowledge can then be made accessible to all team members to review learning materials as needed.
2. Automated workflows
Managing an entire LMS platform alone can quickly get complicated.
There are many factors at play in an LMS platform, especially if the platform allows for blended learning. As such, you need a platform that offers automated workflows.
For example, let’s look at how an automated workflow can improve L&D scheduling.
Without automation, business leaders and their chosen instructors must handle all of the scheduling tasks manually. This can include sending calendar invites, assigning due dates, and enabling reminders to let employees know about upcoming learning sessions.
Comparatively, with automated workflows, many of these tasks can be handled easily with little to no manual intervention. This automation helps keep employees up to date while minimizing the extra work required of business leaders and instructors.
3. Insights & analytics
As a business leader, ask yourself this key question:
How can you know if your workplace learning and development efforts are effective?
To truly get the most out of your LMS platform, you need a platform that offers analytics and insights.
For instance, one of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of your learning programs is by assessing employee feedback. With an LMS platform that provides analytics and insights, you can integrate surveys and progress-tracking tools into every learning session, making it easier to both receive employee feedback and compare that feedback to employee performance.
Final thoughts: leverage the PlusPlus employee enablement platform
At PlusPlus, we take LMS platforms to the next level.
The PlusPlus employee enablement platform is designed to provide everything you could want out of an LMS platform and more. Our platform embraces immersive learning, ensuring each employee has personalized access to company knowledge and learning materials.
Plus, with our automated workflows and actionable insights, you can spend less time hassling with complicated platform tools and more time assessing the success of your learning programs.
With PlusPlus, you can transform your L&D efforts into a dynamic learning environment that empowers employees to do their best work.
Talk with the PlusPlus sales team today to book a demo.
