What Is A Learning Management System?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software program or web-based technology that is used to plan, carry out, and evaluate a particular learning process. It is employed for eLearning procedures and, in its most common configuration, consists of two components: a server that handles the essential functionality and a User Interface that is controlled by teachers, learners, and administrators. There are countless variations in an ever-widening range of industries. An LMS will have features like various course formats, a place for people to turn in their assignments, and analytics to monitor engagement levels. That, however, is only a small sample of the attributes that might be present.
An LMS is used to support staff training, and for enhancing it when considering retail in particular. This could involve giving a newly promoted store manager an overview of their duties, introducing your brand values to new sales assistants through an online induction course, or providing a visual merchandising team with access to the most recent store design resources through video integration.
Types Of Retail Training That An LMS Can Provide
1. Induction Training
Using an LMS to deliver induction training has a number of advantages over some of the other options. First of all, it offers a high degree of consistency which is a crucial component of the customer service component of retail businesses. You could reduce a full day of in-person training to an hour-long online course that your employees can access from home and go over as many times as necessary to understand the material, by developing a company-specific induction course. When using an LMS, there are many different ways to create an introduction course, including downloadable documents, a slideshow presentation, or an interactive video. The advantage of continuing to use the same, consistent messages over time is another benefit of an LMS.
2. Health And Safety
Many believe that retail is a more dangerous industry. Frontline employees in your company will encounter a variety of risks, including lifting fresh inventory, using step ladders, and utilizing various POS systems. Delivering a variety of health and safety courses online can help you lower the risk to your employees.
Managers and senior staff will be able to monitor that employees are up to date with your safety guidelines and this will help to lower the risk of an accident, especially with a good LMS that has analytic functionality or a robust reporting system. The training is also probably going to need to be reviewed by your team on occasion.
3. Compliance Training
Several new laws have been introduced over the last few years. For instance, the GDPR just went into effect, and the new rules caught some people off guard and left many feeling confused. Numerous new regulations and serious consequences for improper handling of personal data were brought about by the new legislation.
You can efficiently distribute new courses among your team with the help of an LMS. That means you can be among the first to act and alert your team when a new piece of legislation directly affects retail. Making sure you have a system to share information quickly has never been more important, because gathering and processing data is important for retail businesses that have both a high street and an online presence.
4. Continuity Training
Retailers need to be able to quickly train new employees. Because safety regulations are constantly changing, in-store staff have to adapt quickly and become familiar with new regulations. Many retailers are able to accomplish this with greater efficiency thanks to an LMS, which also makes it easy to implement new regulations by simply adding a new course to it. This makes a task that might have been a nightmare into a fairly straightforward one.
These are just a few instances of how an LMS can be used to make your training procedures more efficient. Traditionally, it would be expensive and time-consuming to deliver the aforementioned types of training. However, with an LMS in place, you can minimize the work and expenses.
What Challenges Might You Encounter When Putting An LMS For Retail Into Place?
It makes sense to consider the difficulties you might encounter before investing in a feature-rich LMS. Here are a few of the most widespread:
1. Difficulty Engaging Your Team
Getting your team involved will likely be one of your biggest challenges. An important element that boosts engagement is having the proper setup. Your sales assistants aren't thinking about the online compliance training you've been bugging them about. There are numerous ways to promote greater levels of engagement. You can program automatic email reminders to go right to your employees' inbox. Gamification, which rewards learner engagement, is another option.
2. Making Training Accessible
There are so many different kinds of devices available. This can cause problems if you depend on your employees using their own devices to access your LMS. Making sure your platform is well-designed is a way to get around this. It will be simple to access from a variety of devices, from a phone to a desktop computer, if it is responsive. You can also consider turning your LMS into a mobile app which complements your web-based offering. This has countless benefits for retailers. It’ll mean the hardware you need to provide within your stores or to your head office team could be anything from a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop. Many businesses are allowing their teams to use their own devices.
Conclusion
Anyone considering implementing an LMS in their retail business should start with the above ideas. There are, however, a lot of other factors to take into account. There are seasoned providers of LMS services which work with businesses of all sizes to help along the way, from the early stages of ideation to implementation and support. If you have any additional questions or are interested in finding out more about how we can assist you in creating an LMS for your company, get in touch with us.
