Choosing an LMS FOR EMPLOYEE TRAINING

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1 Choosing an LMS FOR EMPLOYEE TRAINING As organizations grow it becomes more challenging to scale your internal learning culture. You must be certain that your staff is trained in the entire organizational culture from the way that they interact with customers, to how they make inputs into key systems, to how they engage with one another. New cloud-based technologies are already useful in all aspects of your business. It s time for your employee training to scale up from your current processes to a 21st century learning process with proven results: The cloud-based learning management system.

2 How Training Worked Before Learning Management Systems Employee Training In The Classroom Before you begin creating your online compliance training development strategy, you ll probably want to get a clear sense of exactly who your audience is. What is their educational and professional background? Do they have a great deal of knowledge and experience in the industry, or are they newcomers? What do they consider to be fun or entertaining? You can get the answers to all of these questions through surveys, interviews, or simply by observing them on the job. You can also ask the company to provide you with a profile of a common employee, so that you can determine which elearning design elements and multimedia tools would be ideal additions to your online compliance training courses. Another important part of your online compliance training research should be to determine the core compliance policies and procedures. Find out how much of the subject matter has already been covered in previous online compliance training modules and which pieces of information are entirely new. This can help to differentiate between the content that simply needs to be refreshed within the employees minds and that which needs to be newly acquired and absorbed. Pre-LMS Training is Expensive No matter how you look at it, training can be expensive. Even if you can train everyone onsite, you still have to repeat sessions and hire outside vendors or have your training staff and employees tied up in sessions instead of doing other work. Since most companies can t shut down entirely to conduct training, you often have to pay overtime, reduce workloads, or somehow absorb the cost of having employees out of production and in training. If you have a geographic distance involved, expenses skyrocket for travel, space rental, and other outside costs. And printing costs for classroom course materials add a significant expense as well. Company Culture Training Doesn t Reflect 21st Century Technology Training is important and sets the tone for how your company operates. Our current digital world is online, searchable, shareable, and self-managed. Classroom training can feel old-school and outdated. If you treat training as unimportant, it s likely that your employees will feel the same. On the other hand, if you place a positive emphasis on training and provide quality content that resembles current online standards, your employees will value it as well

3 Transitioning To An elearning Program As you begin to look at creating an elearning program, you ll first be inundated with options. It s important to set a clear and measurable goal early on in this process. Keeping that goal in mind as you build your program will help ensure that it meets the needs of your company and isn t just something cool or a way to incorporate technology that isn t even needed. What do you hope to accomplish with this endeavor? The Training Program You Create Must Meet The Needs Of Your Employees. If your company goal has something to do with saving money, time, or other resources, that s certainly fine, but it must work for your users. Your users will consist of employees who complete training in the program as well as training administrators who help keep the program running. How will you know when you ve done it? Your Users Will Consist Of Employees Who Complete Training In The Program & Training Administrators Who Help Keep The Program Running. Many companies have implemented a learning management system (LMS) to help keep all of their training content and data in a central location

4 Getting Employee Buy-In If your staff is used to more traditional courses in a face-to-face classroom environment, selling the idea of elearning or an LMS, might take time. The key is implementing a system that is easy to use, and easy for anyone to manage. A 21st century LMS will be cloud-based, easy to access from any device, and even easier to use. You should also consider an internal marketing plan to get employees familiar with the changes you are about to make. Here are some questions you might want to be prepared to answer for your staff: Why Should I Use Elearning? Employees may wonder why they should even bother getting engaged with elearning. It is more time in front of a computer and there is no classroom interaction. You will want to explain that they can access it when they need it from any device. And they can learn more about any particular subject whenever they are ready. The ability to interact with the training means they can go at their own pace, moving back or ahead based on their individual learning needs. And contacting subject matter experts for discussion only when they need it. It gives the employees a more flexible learning program. How Can I Use This Knowledge? Will employees walk away with something they can use or is it just a waste of time? This question is something they should have asked regarding classroom training sessions as well. But changing to an online learning system often forces employees to think more about their own learning. As you would in any classroom event you should emphasizing how the training will directly impact them and help improve their job performance. Change is hard for some employees. Help them understand the importance of all forms of learning. Will Taking Training Online Help Me? This issue directly relates to how online training can be more beneficial than traditional classroom training in specific situations. It is an important factor to make sure your employees understand. If it s not to their benefit, then they won t accept it or want to use it. You can drive the benefits home by giving specific ways it will be to their benefit. Does training completion make them eligible to apply for promotion? Be sure to outline how they can make themselves more marketable. If the online training will help them get better at specific aspects of their job, explain the rewards that come along with that (whether it is increased sales, better evaluation scores, etc.). The key is to make it personal and keep it real. How Can I Be Sure I Learned It? Those who are actively involved in classroom training by asking questions and interacting with the instructor and other students might panic when they are faced with taking training alone on a computer. You can outline the ways that the course will help address their concerns. Built in evaluations and assessments will both test their knowledge and allow them to provide feedback for future enhancements. Reassure your employees that subject matter experts are available for Q&A online as well

5 A Few LMS Selection Tips For Your Employee Training With so much at stake, it s important that you make the transition to elearning in a well thought out process. If you plan to use an LMS, doing your research and finding one that fits your company s objectives is critical. Finding the perfect LMS for your employee training will likely consist of software that includes some of these features: Fully Accessible Newer, more advanced, LMSs offer accessibility from a wide range of devices from laptops to ipads and cell phones. This greater degree of flexibility will help ease your employee s access to training content. Gamification Today s employees are well ingrained in the video game culture. You can cultivate that interest and knowledge by creating video game like programs for your training. There is no limit to what you can really do with this exciting new technology. Help invoke some friendly competition by encouraging your employees to continue playing and putting a leaderboard up for everyone to see. Reporting A good LMS will make it easy for your training administrators to assign training, see who has completed sessions, and what their scores were on assessments. This ability to track users, quickly compile reports, and access your training data in a central location will be a valuable asset and time saver. Course Library A good employee training program will have a searchable library where all elearning content is readily available. Having this on-demand/ just-in-time training available means that employees can access the training whenever they need it. When they encounter an unknown situation on the job, or simply want to learn something new, this training will be a valuable resource. Mobile-Enabled Internet is no longer restricted to a desktop computers. Employees are using electronic devices such as tablets and smartphones to access the internet. You might be surprised to see that employees are interested in accessing training from wherever they are at a given moment. Your mobile options can include a light version of the training website, or a stand-alone application that can be downloaded from an app store

6 Success Stories Of Employee Training Within An Lms Saved over $18, by implementing an LMS to perform initial Employee Training Employees are able to complete training modules that are best suited in an online environment prior to coming in for a face to face workshop. Significantly increased speed of new employee onboarding Became a more efficient training organization by cutting five weeks off of total training time. Reduced its total instructor led training time by 60% by allowing employees to complete critical training requirements through an LMS that were better facilitated online than in a classroom. Created a way to standardize online employee training for over 900,000 products. This allowed the employees to access training material on-demand when they needed it most. Sales and customer support employees can easily reference product training material online through their LMS. This allows for a more streamlined organization system that lets employees access needed training materials when they need them most. The vast organization, which initially found it difficult to get employees to engage with the training, saw a huge increase in training completion rates after deploying an LMS. The company found that by allowing employees to complete critical employee training on-demand when and where it was most convenient for them, engagement and completion rates increase dramatically. Depending on the organizational culture, many companies will find completion and engagement can increase when using an LMS instead of traditional classroom methods. Reduced travel expenditures by 60% by allowing trainers to focus on delivering training through an LMS rather than constantly travel for on-site training sessions. Easily manages training tracking and course completion from one central location

7 How Will Online Training Help Your Company? Fully Accessible Making learning fully accessible outside the office will help employees learn even when they are not on your time clock. That s basically free training! Options like mobile applications and gamification increase the likelihood that employees will be invested in the content and have a desire to increase their score, interact with colleagues, or complete a level and continue moving ahead. Return on Investment An LMS is a good return on investment (ROI) that may have a positive impact on your company s bottom line. Spending your time creating quality content that can be reused multiple times is a good way to spend your valuable in-house resources. An LMS helps relieve much of the burden of training administration, tracking, planning, and implementation. Accountability You will help foster an environment where employees are accountable and responsible for their training. They can log in when they need it, and complete it at the pace that works for them. Eager employees who want to maximize their potential can take advantage of the opportunity to learn as much as they can about their organization and training subjects. Blended Learning It s easy to incorporate blended learning technology into an LMS. This helps ensure you meet the needs of all of your learners. Those who sit in the front row and are fully engaged in the classroom can be just as engaged with discussion boards and other social aspects of elearning. The employees who sit in the back and you never know if they are even paying attention or getting anything out of the content might respond well to some of the other training methodologies. Furthermore, you ll have concrete data results to help ensure you re getting the message to all of your staff, not just a few. Real Life Learning Ability to train on subjects that don t lend themselves well to the classroom environment. Soft skills, social issues, and interpersonal communication are critical training subjects that are sometimes difficult to present in a meaningful way. Building courses that allow employees to follow a path based on how they respond to questions or scenarios are more real life than most things you can present in a classroom. As you begin creating your online training program, you ll find more and more reasons that it benefits your company. This process has never been easier now that there are quick tools and resources to help make building training simple, regardless of your level of your technology level. The benefits of choosing an LMS for your employee training program will have long term, positive implications for your entire organization. For more information visit REV