Businesses have been severely affected by the Covid-19 lockdown and planning for the future has never been so important as it is now.
This is a good time to look at how you can make your processes more efficient, get your marketing campaigns ready for when the lockdown is lifted and give your employees the tools they need to hit the ground running.
One area you should look at while you have some time is how you train and update the skills of your workforce, whether it’s to provide a better service for customers or when learning about a new product or service.
A Learning Management System or LMS, designed for use online, can be used for a wide range of educational and training programmes in your business. The great news is it’s easier to get up and running than you think.
Why You Should Invest in a Learning Management System
According to elearningindustry.com:
- 68% of us prefer learning in the workplace.
- 58% of employees prefer to engage with self-paced learning.
- In the US, 42% of businesses found that providing online learning increased their revenue.
What is an LMS?
A learning management system or LMS is a piece of software in your business infrastructure that allows you to create and post training courses for your staff and track how these are used. It’s a learning website within your business that employees at all levels can access and there are numerous platforms to choose from.
Depending on the type of business that you run, training modules could include everything from 1-minute explainer videos to more intensive and in-depth management training modules. You might even want to include gaming and other ways of learning new skills.
The Benefits of an LMS
- It gives your employees instant access to learning materials that could make a big difference in their performance and productivity.
- An LMS reduces the cost of inhouse training by providing a range of bite-size and more in-depth training that employees can access in their own time.
- You can track everyone’s learning and build new content to further improve performance based on feedback.
- For employees, it offers a clear path to not only find the information they need but to help build their careers.
- LMS delivers a more knowledgeable workforce at every level including management and leadership and delivers greater customer satisfaction.
How to Implement an LMS for Your Business
Like any online service, creating and implementing an LMS requires careful planning and thought. The first step is to look at the type of learning you want to include for your business and how you need to organise it effectively.
As with any kind of content you place online, every learning module needs to have a purpose and a specific intended outcome. A lot of this will depend on the size and complexity of your business as well as which sector you operate in.
If you are a medium to large size company, for instance, you may well have different sections that require different levels and types of training. A smaller company might sensibly have a more generic output that is aimed at everyone.
You also need to consider what type of media you are going to include. Video is a powerful and engaging tool for online learning but can be expensive to produce. Animated sequences for 30 second or 1-minute how-to guides have come down in cost over the last few years. Other options are webinars and written pages with interactive content as well as gamified learning.
How this content is all going to be centralised into one learning system and how employees access it will also be vital. You might even want some content, for example, product demonstrations and explainer guides, to be available to your customers.
How We Are Innovative Can Help
Choosing the right software to implement your learning management system is important. There are some 500 different products on the market at the moment.
We create custom LMS websites based on Lifter, LearnPress and LearnDash that allow you to implement innovative and engaging learning for your business. Our expert team will work with you to develop the best strategy, organise your learning material and bring everything together to build a system that is easy to use and maintain.
If you would like to find out more about LMS for your business, contact the team at We Are Innovative today.
