Which Are The Differences Of An LXP And An LMS?
The quality of your onboarding training can mean the difference between retaining or losing your new hires. It’s not something you can leave to chance. That’s the reason to welcome the arrival of Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs).
The Challenge Of Onboarding
Organisations and new hires alike recognise the importance of successful onboarding. It should be a smooth process by which employees quickly become part of their new working environment. But making that happen throws up real challenges.
How do you make sure that your new employees have all the information and support they need before they start working? How do you make them feel part of the team? How do you introduce them to the organisation’s culture? How do you ensure that they’re quickly able to do what you hired them to? And, when does onboarding leave them safely onboard?
The answer to all these questions lies in the effectiveness of onboarding induction and training. For these many organisations have relied on traditional Learning Management Systems (LMSs). But now there’s the potential to adopt a different approach to onboarding by replacing your LMS with an LXP.
What Difference Can An LXP Make?
The fundamental difference between an LXP and an LMS can be discerned in their names. The LXP focuses on the experience of learning, rather than the management of the learner. The LMS tends to prioritise the general objectives of L&D and HR above accommodating individual learners. LMS focus on broad outcomes, presuming a standard level of knowledge and preparedness, adopting a formal, sometimes inflexible approach to the delivery of training. LXPs have the potential to recognise the role of informal learning and offer a degree of flexibility that allows them to meet the needs of individual learners. LXPs can more easily take account of a learner’s prior experience and level of knowledge, offering the prospect of individual learning pathways rather than set universal learning outcomes.
In short, the LXP is more learner-centric than the LMS. Its accessibility and flexibility are evidenced in the diversity of content it can offer. Instead of locking learners into a set course, the LXP allows learners to create their own path through the onboarding process using a wide range of resources, some of them generated by users themselves.
In its design and implementation, the LXP is geared towards continuous learning, in contrast to the LMS’s typical treatment of learning as a series of events to be completed. This focus on learning as a process and experience makes it ideal for onboarding where the end is not easily determined and depends much on the readiness and prior experience of the individual new employee. LXPs recognise difference and address the fact that there’s no such thing as a standard new hire.
How LXPs Enhance Onboarding
Let’s take a look in more detail at what LXPs can do for the onboarding process.
1. Personalisation Of Learning
New hires clearly need to get up to speed with the organisation’s processes, practices, and culture. But they arrive with different levels of experience, knowledge, and preparedness. A standard onboarding process will, of necessity, treat them all equally. But an LXP offers the flexibility to recognise what they already know. So, instead of every new hire taking the same onboarding training, with an LXP and its range and diversity of resources you can give new employees access to what they need to know, without forcing them to undergo training on what they already know.
This personalisation of learning means new hires only access information that is relevant to what they’re doing. Contextualised information will have more impact. The range of formats—from pdfs to video blogs—enhances learner choice and makes onboarding more engaging, underlining the importance of a good and productive learning experience.
2. Flexibility
Too often onboarding builds barriers rather than removes them. By treating new employees as different from the start, by taking them away from their colleagues for onboarding training, you signal their difference. With an LXP you have the possibility to run onboarding training side-by-side with work. The use of microlearning content means onboarding can be taking in easily- and quickly-digestible chunks, while at the same time the new employee is becoming part of the team.
3. Accessibility
Access to content in an LMS is often restricted or difficult. LXPs surface content across a range of devices and platforms. This allows learners to access learning on-the-go. The inclusion of Google-grade search engines and the potential to embed AI-powered chatbots allow learners to find just what they need when they need it. They can go directly to the information rather than having to wade through a course to uncover the learning point they require.
4. Variety Of Content
With its focus on delivering resources that learners can find and use for themselves, the LXP accepts a range of content in varying formats. Resources can be in the form of a blog, a weblink, a short video, as well as the more familiar PDF file or eLearning course. These resources are chunked, so they can be easily re-used, re-purposed and bundled together to suit individual learners.
The LXP also accepts material generated by users, which means you can make use of previously untapped and unshared knowledge by encouraging experienced employees to record their tips, advice, and support.
5. The Learning Experience
Training can often be an isolating and ill-rewarding experience as learners are required to complete programmes that they then forget.
Isolation is addressed by including social functions that allow new hires in easy contact with new colleagues via the LXP. This not only makes new hires feel part of the team, it also encourages them to look for assistance and reassurance through dialogue. The interactions build confidence and accelerate getting new hires to feel fully on board.
As a way of making onboarding more relevant and impactful, the LXP offers a learning environment that allows learners to pick and choose what they need. And the materials remain accessible so that learners can return to them whenever they require.
This is critical in onboarding, where, in the race to get new hires on board they’re often bombarded with information which they can’t take in or which is not yet relevant to them.
Taking a leaf in its UX design from social media the LXP focuses not only on what’s needed but how it’s accessed and delivered. The emphasis on the importance of good learning experience can make onboarding more relevant and engaging.
6. Self-Onboarding
The LXP’s core features go a long way to allowing new employees to onboard themselves. The LXP places the user at the centre, while still collecting hard data on choices made and content accessed that is needed by HR to show that onboarding is happening. Allowing employees to onboard themselves gives them not only a sense of control but also makes them responsible for their own performance from the start. It’s a way of fast-tracking them into the working environment and recognising and challenging their previous experience.
Also, the LXPs recommender and notification systems, along with the use of chatbots, mean that even though greater responsibility for onboarding is placed on employees, they have constant access to support and mentoring and don’t become lost, isolated or overwhelmed.
7. Collaborative And Social
The LMS approach to onboarding is often a one-way street. It determines what you need to know, how you will know it and the time in which you will learn it.
In contrast, the LXP is less constrictive and offers learners options and choices. Learners can interrogate the system precisely for what they need to know. Learning becomes a dialogue and more effective for it.
LXPs allow learners to have their own learning profile and to connect with other learners. In the onboarding setting, this helps new employees be recognised and make connections with their teams.
8. Learning In The Workflow
The constant access to learning resources offered by LXPs brings learning into the workflow. This is a critical message and requirement for onboarding. It emphasises that learning is part of work and that onboarding can be done while the new employee is getting to grips with his or her new job.
It stresses the importance of the link between effective and engaging training and on-the-job performance, too. In this way, LXPs help sustain a learning culture.
LXPs Going Beyond The LMS
LXPs extend an organisation’s onboarding options. They build on what LMSs currently deliver but switch the focus away from the management of learning to the experience of learning. They place learners at the centre of onboarding and help fast-track them to be fully integrated into the organisation, and working productively.
The benefits for the organisation are better retention, less churn, and more engaged new hires. LXPs offer the prospect of fast, effective onboarding that will translate into better productivity earlier and improved performance from new employees over time. Download the eBook Power Employee Onboarding Using A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) to discover more about the topic, and join the webinar for supplementary insights.
Sources:
The Onboarding Process: How To Help New Hires Adapt To A New Environment
The Invisible LMS: why AI will change your relationship with Learning Management Systems
5 Ways To Accelerate Onboarding With LMS Software