Training with an LMS Can Stop HR Headaches
Gone are the days when a bunch of weary, red-eyed employees would drag themselves to the conference room at the end of an exhausting workday for the mandatory training session. Flipping their notepads open, they would prop their eyelids with their pencils and stare mindlessly at the instructor droning on about the latest changes in company policy.
Not any more.
Surely HRs everywhere can’t simply drop company trainings and sit around keeping their fingers crossed in the hopes of finding ideal employees coming through the door perfectly trained already.
They also can’t hope that instructors will magically transform into comedians to keep the attendants awake and interested.
HR teams have recognized the need for injecting a dose of fun into company training courses and making them more accessible to employees at the same time. This doesn't necessarily involve foregoing quality in order to get a few laughs from the crowd.
Investing in your personnel through regular training not only fosters their technical and professional skills, but also motivates and involves them in the company’s mission and vision for the future.
If done the right way, company trainings would not be the dreaded extracurricular activity.
Instead, they would be seen as team activities and exciting opportunities to learn and develop.
The modern objectives of employee training programs should include:
- Mobile – training sessions should not disrupt the business dynamic and be perceived as “days off” when employees feel comfortable switching off.
- Instead, they should be available through modern technology and accessible from anywhere.
- Collaborative – the staff should not be asked to take charge of their own training individually without giving them the benefit of teamwork.
- An element of collaboration fosters better workplace relationships and inspires a spirit of working towards a common goal.
- Engaging – reading through dry training materials or listening to long informational lectures can only be counterproductive.
- Interacting with the training content in a variety of ways keeps employees present and involved.
- Useful – if an employee doesn’t see the value of a particular training course, he or she is less likely to invest time and attention into the material. Content should be tailored, relevant and directly applicable to the employee’s daily activities to derive optimal value.
- Accessible – course materials should be available and easily accessible through a convenient reference system.
- Integrated – a training program should be independent of location and available to the entire network of employees and contractors alike.
- Cost-effective – the training course’s cost should be adequate in relation to the course’s value or expected outcome and should embody an expense-minimizing approach.
A traditional conference room training session simply cannot cover 100% these vital features of a successful program.
This is where a Learning Management System (LMS), or a platform for creating and distributing training content, carefully developed with employees in mind, comes in.
HR teams are increasingly turning to technology for their staff training needs.
It isn’t surprising that almost 42% of global Fortune 500 companies are using a form of e-learning, self-paced course to train their employees.
Statistics reveal that over 25% of employees globally quit their jobs strictly because their employer doesn’t offer enough learning and development opportunities.
Doubled with the fact that an effective LMS, like TalentLMS, is believed to increase staff productivity by as much as 50%, a company falling behind on the trend is missing out on some serious benefits.
On a larger scale, employing an effective e-learning solution helps over 72% of companies keep abreast of the competition by consistently staying on top of industry trends.
In this case, refraining from creating an effective educational environment for your company’s staff is a conscious choice to let other companies take the lead.
Take for example a large company in the construction or oil and gas industry (or any other industry where employees work on site, rather than in an office).
The HR team may struggle to coordinate their training efforts, since the schedules and locations of different teams are usually very disjointed.
Additionally, larger businesses tend to work with a high number of independent contractors, who, in some cases also need to be brought up to speed with the company’s policies and thought leadership.
In this case, a unified LMS, like TalentLMS, can provide a centralized platform for conducting trainings without struggling to reach the individual employee.
Another advantage of adopting a modern LMS for your company is that the results of each training session are very transparent. Its effectiveness is also easy to measure, analyse and improve on.
As an HR professional you certainly see the benefit of having a systematized look at the staff’s performance in terms of learning and development and using it to plan for future trainings.
I am excited to learn about the challenges you and your HR team are facing in creating meaningful and effective training programs, so we can face them and move forward.
- Have you already considered integrating a fresh LMS solution for your company training programs?
- Have you discovered a training strategy that has really resonated with the employees in your company?
I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.