5 key ways to get the most out of your Learning Management System (LMS)

A learning management system (LMS) is a piece of software that allows businesses to host online learning materials to use to train their workforce. LMSs are the stalwart of digital employee training; an essential tool which allows HR and Learning and Development (L&D) professionals easy administration, monitoring, reporting, automation and delivery of courses and learning content. Many businesses were already starting to move away from traditional face-to-face learning in favour of a full or partial digitised solution (also known as a blended learning model) and the recent exponential rise in working from home has only fast-tracked this shift.

But how can you really ensure you’re making the most out of your LMS?

Let’s take a look as we uncover 5 key steps any organisation can take to maximise the impact of their LMS and ultimately their L&D provision.

1. Assign learning content in your LMS

One of the biggest benefits of an LMS is the amount of time it can save by automating and assigning learning content.

Whether you want to send 1 piece of content to 1 person or allocate mandatory training across an entire organisation, an LMS allows all this to happen with just a few clicks by using automated workflows.

For example, certain standard work courses could be a requirement of an organisation’s onboarding process, overall learning strategy, or essential to meet training standards or adhere to legal or compliance obligations. BPP did exactly this as highlighted in our case study.

Assigning this learning content in an LMS makes it quick and easy to ensure those who need to complete the training are notified, and allows admins and managers to track completion rates in real-time.

2. Use your LMS to encourage and empower

Once content is allocated in an LMS, completion progress can be tracked. HR and L&D teams will have complete visibility of whether someone has started learning, is mid-way through or has finished. This can be used as a basic monitoring tool, or to flag any potential concerns, such as whether someone is struggling with a particular piece of learning content after not progressing for a time.

But, of course, we understand that sometimes it’s not just all about the mandatory side – assigning content should be engaging as well. In fact, it can be a brilliant tool for encouraging and empowering people too.

As discussed in a recent Forbes article, when an employee physically sees their own successes and how developing their potential is so powerful, it proves to them that they can always achieve more than they think. In fact, our CCL case study serves as a great example of how course management, gamification and activity completion tracking can be used to increase learner participation.

With this, an LMS can allow users to become their own biggest advocates. When training content really resonates with learners, and identifies with their personal circumstances and aspirations, it allows them to engage more and perform better by discovering their strengths. They can also set realistic personal goals and implement best strategies for reaching them, which in turn, allows for constant reflection about their learning and what they need next.

3. Ensure your LMS removes any time or physical restrictions

Undoubtedly, one of the major benefits of an LMS is that it’s all online. Most LMSs allow users to login from anywhere that has internet access, at any time that suits them.

This removes the restriction of having to learn ‘on the clock’, and it means that employees can navigate their personal lives too. In fact, a recent case study by Slack in HRD Connect comments that they’re “encouraging teams to find rhythms that work for them”, as happier employees will always reflect in higher performance.

A great example of this would be the platform we built for MBL, which features an interactive mobile and tablet experience to give everyone the opportunity to learn regardless of their personal schedules.

4. Your LMS can become a knowledge hub

Having one centralised ‘hub’ for learning is another huge benefit an LMS can offer. It allows an organisation to safely host and save all important data in one location, and as it’s online, it means that HR and L&D admins can easily make any updates as and when they need to, without having to send out new documents every time.

What’s more, most LMS platforms are built using advanced encryption features which ensures any data or content saved on them is secure, offering peace of mind for organisational stakeholders.

5. Use your LMS for internal progression

According to the 2021 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, 59% of L&D professionals listed that upskilling and reskilling was their top priority, shortly followed by leadership and management at 53% and virtual onboarding with 33% – indicating an awareness for more learning and development opportunities which can be accessed online at any point.

In fact, 51% of L&D professionals said that internal mobility is a higher priority now than before the pandemic, and that a general strategy moving into 2022 should for skill building and internal promotional programmes helping to make talent a renewable resource.

But it’s not just management, it’s the employees themselves too who are big fans of internal learning. So much so that HR Review comments that nearly 38% of employees reported a promotion after taking an online course.

With that in mind, why not use your LMS to assign development content?

This could be a personal progression plan agreed between an employee and manager to help them secure a promotion, or simply if an employee says they’re keen to learn a new subject area which they feel could benefit the business too – an LMS is the perfect tool to build up a knowledge portfolio and help with recruiting from within.

Plan, build, train and support

We’re here to become an intuitive extension of your business. As your technical partner, BuildEmpire will work with you to build an engaging learning environment that fits your needs today, and in the future. Then, through training and ongoing support, we will ensure you and your learners always get the most out of it.