Businesses are competing in an ever more complex, fast-moving and uncertain corporate landscape – this leads to challenges with maintaining a workforce with the necessary skills in the current digital, information-based “people economy” and means shorter a “shelf-life” for knowledge, consequently placing a premium on keeping up to date, upskilling or reskilling to help support future growth. As a result, the importance of learning tools and platforms to help engage the workforce and manage organization-wide learning and development activities is also increasing.
One of the most important tools available to organizations is the learning management system (or “LMS”). A modern, comprehensive and feature-rich LMS, such as DNASTREAM’s Rapid Launch™ learning platform, is a key element in ensuring effective engagement with, and between, the workforce throughout the learning lifecycle. Furthermore, it can be used to deliver the organization’s learning strategy in a uniform manner and, in turn, help to drive achievement of business goals through building, maintaining and expanding the required competencies across the different business functions.
So, what tangible benefits can the LMS deliver? Let’s consider a few key areas:
Improved planning & execution of learning initiatives Establishing and maintaining a workforce that can has the required levels of job performance with high degrees of job satisfaction depends very much on the individuals being able to obtain, maintain and enhance their skills. To do this effectively requires a well-planned and ongoing investment in learning and development, together with the ability to successfully execute the necessary initiatives. Using the LMS can significantly improve the planning, management and execution of training though features such as structured learning journeys, role-based curriculums and effective training delivery management. Features such as automatic assignment of training curriculums to new joiners or those changing role, competency management and flexible training event management help to ensure training needs are identified and delivered without excessive manual processing.
Reduced costs of knowledge transfer & training The LMS can be used to plan, manage and even deliver training events and facilitate knowledge transfer. Instructor-led classroom training is still one of the most popular methods of delivery and remains the “go-to” approach for some requirements and traditional e-learning is a well-established approach however, the platform can support a wide range of other online training delivery and knowledge transfer approaches such as virtual classrooms, self-service micro-learning and community-led learning. These online, anytime and anywhere learning experiences delivered on the learner’s choice of device, allow organizations to act in a more flexible and targeted way, which avoids the costs associated with in-person events and reduces the impact (i.e. cost) of time spent away from the “day job” by those attending training.
Centralized & up to date knowledge assets Businesses drive innovation and growth based on their intellectual capital, which requires consistent, accurate, up to date and easily accessible knowledge assets. The LMS provides the ability to establish and maintain a central repository with a suite of knowledge assets to support the entire organization – both internal and external (e.g. contractors or partners). Such a repository enables a uniform approach to learning, which is particularly important for a distributed workforce. Learning assets can be collated and curated from many sources and made available via the LMS in a variety of formats to suit the specific needs of the audience.
High levels of workforce engagement In today’s world, businesses are increasingly engaging with people by offering them an interconnected experience rather than the traditional one-to-one transactional type of approach. Community and peer engagement features included in the LMS offer important ways to support the learner’s knowledge acquisition and ongoing skills development through connecting with others in the organization to share knowledge and offer advice. Features such as gamification create a fun and engaging learning environment, that promotes friendly competition and rewards achievement. In addition, having insight into a learner’s needs and preferences can be an enabler for offering proactive and predictive learning without the need for the organization’s learning and development team to spend time determining these. Artificial intelligence features, such as those available and being developed in the Rapid Launch™ learning platform, can identify the training patterns and course preferences of a learner, enabling best fit training to be recommended from the central knowledge repository to support the learner’s needs. This type of enriched learner experience results in improved levels of motivation and engagement that helps people to maintain the learning journey and ultimately retain their value to the organization.
Social learning and knowledge sharing An advanced LMS, such as the Rapid Launch™ learning portal, allows learners to take advantage of powerful social learning and knowledge sharing features, including online forums, live chat, news feeds, and more, that facilitate learning from (and with) peers and colleagues. Social learning helps to people develop, support and share significant insights in an informal manner and can also prove to be an important tool to generate knowledge resources and create valuable, expert communities to support the wider organization.
Analytics and business intelligence The learning analytics features of the LMS enable the organization to gain key insights to help manage and drive learning initiatives. The ability to easily track learner progress and generate performance reports at an overall or individual basis can be used by learning and development to assess overall competency, identify gaps or areas for improvement and take the necessary actions.
Extended engagement beyond the organization With a cloud-based LMS such as the Rapid Launch™ learning platform, it is possible to extend engagement beyond the boundaries of organization to drive sales, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction especially when partners are involved in generating revenue or delivering services. The LMS can support the delivery of relevant and engaging training material as well as enabling assessments or certifications to ensure partner resources are appropriately trained and qualified.
Simplified compliance processes Many organizations need to ensure key elements of their workforce achieve and maintain specific skills and knowledge to ensure compliance with regulatory or industry requirements. A feature-rich LMS such as the Rapid Launch™ learning portal has built-in capabilities to automate the administration, deployment and tracking of mandatory compliance training to reduce help overheads.
Conclusion
As is clear, utilising a modern and comprehensive learning management system can drive numerous benefits. The LMS can address the needs for a flexible, personalized and relevant training management and delivery platform to “bridge the gap” between learning and performance. When selecting a learning management system, it is important to ensure it is equipped with proven and effective functionality, including an engaging, mobile-ready user experience, agile training management capabilities, efficient data storage, flexibility of scale, built-in intelligence, responsive design to enable multi-device access, extensive community and colloboration features, and useful analytics, plus of course the benefit of ongoing investment and innovation.
About DNASTREAM
DNASTREAM's mission is to help customers deliver sustainable business benefit from IT projects through a key focus on ensuring end users embrace the process of change and are fully equipped and motivated to adopt new technology and ways of working.
The DNASTREAM Rapid Launch™ learning portal is one key tool to help deliver on this mission. It goes beyond a traditional LMS and offers an exciting, engaging, easily deployable and cost-effective, cloud-based platform to support the entire learner lifecycle.
For more information visit www.dnastream.com/rapid-launch-learning-platform.